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Tsū: A social network that shares its advertising revenue with its users

tsu.co

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Re: Tsū: A social network that shares its advertising revenue with its users

#11

Post by andypants »

LinaLauneBaer wrote: post #6
ultimoo wrote: post #3

Good concept but with the whole referral code and profit sharing paradigm it starts looking a little bit like a pyramid scheme.

I may be wrong but a 'real' pyramid scheme works a little different. A pyramid scheme is an unsustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public. (wiki) So by getting more users they are getting more value (ad revenue). A real pyramid scheme wo…

This is what a pyramid scheme is:

  * User 1 pays $20 to join the program with the promise of getting money back for their 'investment'
  * User 0 gets paid $20
  * User 1 refers user 2 to the program
  * User 2 pays $20 to join the program with the promise of getting money back for their 'investment'
  * User 1 gets paid $15 and user 0 gets $5
  * User 2 refers user 3 to the program
  * User 3 pays $20 to join the program with the promise of getting money back for their 'investment'
  * User 2 gets paid $15, user 1 gets $4, and user 0 gets $1
And so on. Users make money by referring more users to pay in to the program. The people at the top of the pyramid make a lot of money, and the rest of the people lose more of their 'investment'. No goods or services are exchanged, nothing of value is created. As soon as people stop joining, the flow of money stops.

The similarity with tsu is in the pyramid-shaped referral payout scheme, but it is not a pyramid scheme because it doesn't depend on new users 'paying in' to generate money. I don't think this kind of referral payout scheme is uncommon.

Re: Tsū: A social network that shares its advertising revenue with its users

#12

Post by andypants »

gondo wrote: post #8

will see how this one will play out. if you have a spare minute, make me rich maybe :) http://www.tsu.co/gondo

Looks like content is only visible to users. I can understand gating the sign up to require an invite, but hiding the content as well will just kill ad revenue.

Re: Tsū: A social network that shares its advertising revenue with its users

#14

Post by xdmnl »

simias wrote: post #5
xdmnl wrote: post #2

From all its (future) advertising revenues, Tsū will keep 10% and give back to its users the remaining 90%: * 50% goes back to you directly * 50% goes back to the people who have invited you, such as the person who invited him gets 33%, the person who invited him/her gets 33% of 33% (~ 11%), the one after that 33% of 33% of 33%, etc... The website is invite-only. You can register here: http://www.tsu.co/xavier .

So anybody who has your "secret" URL can access all of your content? No friend request or anything? So if I understand correctly the model is that the artists/content creators would create a tsu account to post their stuff and consumers would be forced to make a tsu account to access said content (as I just did to access your page)? But then you wouldn't use your tsu account to post personal stuff for fear of your ts…

They launched the invitation system less than 24 hours ago.

I agree with the two issues you mentioned but I think the main issue here is the invitation system : you have to share your profile URL to invite people. They should let people invite strangers with a specific invitation URL.

I suppose they made Tsu profiles accessible to Tsu users only to drive adoption. Once they have enough users, it will make no sense to keep it this way.

EDIT: > But then you wouldn't use your tsu account to post personal stuff for fear of your tsu URL leaking somewhere and giving anybody access to your vacation pictures?

You can share private content to your friends & family (requires you to add users as friends) and public stuff to your followers / Tsu community

Re: Tsū: A social network that shares its advertising revenue with its users

#16

Post by realusername »

andypants wrote: post #12
gondo wrote: post #8

will see how this one will play out. if you have a spare minute, make me rich maybe :) http://www.tsu.co/gondo

Looks like content is only visible to users. I can understand gating the sign up to require an invite, but hiding the content as well will just kill ad revenue.

I agree, and the blurry image weight approximately 678KB (~88% of the size in bytes of the whole page). I'm sure there are less costly ways to create a fake page or to show that you are not allowed to view the page.

Re: Tsū: A social network that shares its advertising revenue with its users

#19

Post by xdmnl »

eperoumal wrote: post #10
xdmnl wrote: post #2

From all its (future) advertising revenues, Tsū will keep 10% and give back to its users the remaining 90%: * 50% goes back to you directly * 50% goes back to the people who have invited you, such as the person who invited him gets 33%, the person who invited him/her gets 33% of 33% (~ 11%), the one after that 33% of 33% of 33%, etc... The website is invite-only. You can register here: http://www.tsu.co/xavier .

How do you plan on controlling fake profiles ? For instance, if I create a bunch of fake profiles linked to a real profile and I post randomly on some fake profiles, access posts from fake profiles from the others, what could be preventing me from doing this (and keep all the advertising money to myself) ?

I don't plan anything since I'm not affiliated with Tsu =)

I don't know if they thought about it but since their goal is to give back advertising money to users, doing so won't harm anyone other than the user who referred you.

Re: Tsū: A social network that shares its advertising revenue with its users

#20

Post by tsu_question »

eperoumal wrote: post #10
xdmnl wrote: post #2

From all its (future) advertising revenues, Tsū will keep 10% and give back to its users the remaining 90%: * 50% goes back to you directly * 50% goes back to the people who have invited you, such as the person who invited him gets 33%, the person who invited him/her gets 33% of 33% (~ 11%), the one after that 33% of 33% of 33%, etc... The website is invite-only. You can register here: http://www.tsu.co/xavier .

How do you plan on controlling fake profiles ? For instance, if I create a bunch of fake profiles linked to a real profile and I post randomly on some fake profiles, access posts from fake profiles from the others, what could be preventing me from doing this (and keep all the advertising money to myself) ?

You basically just described what everybody does with Google Ads: Click bots to click their own ads. So if Tsu displays Google ads, it will be Google's problem (or better: the advertisers' problem). (I don't work at Tsu.)
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