Tsu's afraid...

The Tsu social network has now been running for over a year. It's still relatively new, but has managed to sign up over four million people all around the world. It's been interesting to see where it's been successful. Initially the USA had the most active members. Morocco got big when an account was opened for their king and lots of his subjects joined. India has also done well as you might expect with its massive population. Recently Pakistan saw a boom when a media star there joined and spread the word. Pakistan is currently top of the chart for visitors and views, but Brazil is rising fast.

Of course the big mover in social networks is Facebook and they seem to feel threatened by little Tsu to the extent of not allowing any links to Tsu and they also removed all existing Facebook posts that came via Tsu. Tsu lets you cross-post to your other social networks. This means that all my holiday pictures were removed from Facebook. It is also hampering people inviting their Facebook friends to join Tsu.

If you try to put a Tsu link into a Facebook post you are told that it is 'unsafe'. There's is an option to tell them otherwise, but I'm not sure anyone has had a proper response to that. You also cannot put a link in a Facebook instant message.

Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak stated today that Tsu is actually spamming Facebook less than some other sites with access to the API and that Facebook should restore the deleted content.

This action has not gone unnoticed and there have been several articles on high profile sites about it. ZDNet reported this first (I think). It's also been on Huffington Post, Octafinance, DeMorgen (in Flemish) and, most recently, on CNN.

The publicity may be helping Tsu a little as it can lead to people wanting to join. In some cases the journalists provide their own profile link and thus gain in their own network.

There is a hint of hypocrisy here as Tsu previously blocked links to a site with a (very) similar business model. I think that other site went too far in copying some of the Tsu ideas and there may have been legal action, but I don't know exactly what happened.

I'm sticking with Tsu for now. I've been steadily earning a little each day and should be able to claim my $100 payout before the end of the year at the current rate, and I enjoy the banter I get there. There's massive potential for growth and for people to do very well via the referral incentive.

I still think it's the idea place for creative people who want to be rewarded for their work. They will earn from views, but there are also people 'tipping' good content via Tsu money transfers. As well as liking a post you can give real money. I don't see many other sites that can offer anything like that.

See you on Tsu