What's so special about the Tsu social network?
By Randall McCallum on Sunday, 30 November 2014
Posted in General Issues
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What do you think about Tsu?

What about in comparison to EasySocial based network?

https://www.tsu.co/

In the past month a new social network called Tsu has been generating news. I signed up for it at tsu.co and I do not see much of a robust social network at all and can't really see this network being better than any EasySocial based social network.

I can't see this social network evolve over time to accommodate the needs of the users.

There are a few things that could prove useful in new versions of EasySocial, such as the core monetization. This is the best feature and only unique feature. It can be added with an EasySocial App. and be far more flexible.

Invite Code
You need to have an invite code from another user. The website http://Tsu.co will ask users for a code. I will do my best at https://www.tsu.co/RandallM to send you an invite code to enable you to create your own Tsu account as you are accessing the site through an existing Tsu user through the Invitation Only system.

Post your thoughts on Tsu below.



NEWS SOURCES:

ZDNET

New social network Tsu signs one million users in just five weeks
Summary: Tsu has been celebrating passing its one millionth user. But what is so different about the social media platform that has so many users flocking to sign up?

New social network Tsu has experienced explosive growth since it came out of stealth mode in October 2014. On Thursday the site posted that it had reached the milestone of one million users.

This is an amazing achievement for a relatively unknown social network to reach in five weeks. Social networking behemoth Facebook took ten months to reach one million users on its platform. Tsu’s global rank on Alexa, the measure of how popular the site is, has climbed from below 11,000 in October to 5,000 today.

http://www.zdnet.com/new-social-network-tsu-signs-one-million-users-in-just-five-weeks-7000036118/

re/Code
New Social Network Tsu — Which Pays Users Who Post — Raises $7 Million
October 21, 2014, 5:30 AM PDT

New social network Tsu believes it can get you excited about seeing advertisements. (Seriously!)

That’s because Tsu, which launched on Tuesday with a $7 million investment led by Sancus Capital Prive, is splitting its ad revenue with users, paying them for actively posting on the platform and inviting their friends to join, too.

New York-based Tsu, which looks a lot like Facebook at first glance, only takes 10 percent of the ad revenue it generates, passing the other 90 percent back to users, according to founder Sebastian Sobczak. All the ad revenue Tsu makes in one day, for example, is distributed to users based on how many organic post-views they get during that 24-hour period. The more views and engagement you generate as a user, the larger portion of the pie you get.

This breakdown certainly benefits the site’s most popular users (i.e. celebrities), but there are other ways to make money, too. Smaller percentages of this revenue pie are also used as incentive for people to invite their friends to Tsu, which is invite-only. Users also receive payments when the friends they invite share engaging posts, too.

The idea is that content creators, not just the platform provider, deserve to reap the monetary benefits that come with having an active user base.

http://recode.net/2014/10/21/new-social-network-tsu-which-pays-users-who-post-raises-7-million/
Great post Randall. This explanation makes a lot more sense for why someone would use this social network. I kinda got it from the frontpage, but the split up method you mentioned puts it in better light. A great idea indeed that would definitely encourage posters!
Josh Lewis
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 07:58
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To really lure huge investments like this, you first need to focus on your UI. I have heard from others that they find it hard to pitch for an investment when they are using Joomla but I believe that is pure bullsh*t .

When you use Joomla, it doesn't mean that it has the DNA of a Joomla. As an entrepreneur, your job is to ensure that the entire UI that you are presenting to others looks really nice. For all you know, the codebase behind tsu.co, facebook.com or twitter.com is a pile of mess and could be even worst than Joomla
Mark
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 12:27
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Just registered on their site and played around The navigation there is really horrible
Mark
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 12:32
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According to their FAQ "New members can only join tsū by user invitation". I take it you got an invite to join? (I still haven't been able to join to see what it's like) Randall's main theme here is that you don't need a high quality site in order to engage people. Of course I agree that a quality UI is very important, something I craft a lot in my web work. This site by the sounds of it encourages users much like YouTube does by having their users get paid. Randall is pointing at the idea that "if an okay website can run far because of paid users, imagine what a high quality website could do". If EasySocial had something like this it could attract more users and encourage people to post more which would also make people more excited about ES.

In terms of timing of this post, I think the idea is to have this some how integrated into the payment feature planned later on for ES. Or at least use some of the same methods so that it's centralized.
Josh Lewis
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 12:45
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EXCELLENT

Only comment besides the unique monetization feature that sets Tsu apart - Tsu bored me quickly.

This is the kind of discussion that will set the stage for EasySocial being the social molding clay of choice for creating social networks. To gain traction with users you need to combine the network developers in a common ecosystem that evolves over time to the DELIGHT of everyone.

EasySocial - the social molding clay of choice that evolves to the DELIGHT of everyone.

EasySocialites - An easy socialite is a person who has a reputation in the social networking development society for spending a significant amount of time participating in pushing the envelope of creating unique social activities that inspire consistent submission of content such things as photos from parties and other fashionable events, entertaining guests and being entertained by others of similar standing. To be connected.

By being an EasySocialite, we all get to participate and take the best of what transpires to plot the course of our unique social network.

In Tsu.co there is nothing I find very compelling that engages me to post any content oin a regular basis. I signed up, looked at what it offered and posted the odd bit of content and realized the features offered a lame attempt at engaging people. I believe the numbers of users of Tsu to be Buff and Bullshit. As in to create a viral story by encouragement of original shareholders who just invested $7 million bones into this new network.

Mark hits the nail right on the head with his comments. And bright people like Josh and others will pull it into proper perspective.

An EasySocial based social network offers the social molding clay (features, flexibility, affordability, and support) of choice that allows you to evolve your social network of your ideas and design to meet the needs and the DELIGHT of everyone you are targeting as an audience of users.
Randall McCallum
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 13:13
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As Mark pointed out, a great product starts with a great UX/UI.
Currently EasySocial is great, by far the best social network extension for joomla ... but, there is alsways a but

I will vote for a more deeper separation (if possible) between design and coding. I am pretty sure we don't want thousands of "cloned" social networks out there, that run on default ES template.

I think the key is to find your niche and figure out the right tool and recipe to jump into it. This always involves design, UX & UI and of course this always involves a certain degree of uniqueness.

If you start to cut deep into easysocial in your journey to obtain that uniqueness with your own layout, you will experience a certain level of frustration because ES social current code is a little bit to "tied" to the default layout.

Try to modify the original div classes with your own in template override and you will notice how javascript functionality starts to break.
There is always a workaround ... but it involves a lot of pain and work.

In conclusion, i think we all must understand that:

1. You can't be the "next big thing" with just 100$ investment in a component made for an open-source platform. Of course, it's a start but it does not stop here. Can you achieve it all with open-souce ? Of course, but it doesn't stop at 100$ price-tag

2. You can't be the "next big thing" by taking stuff "as-is", you must develop your own UI/UX, even if you purchase a "ready-made" code, you must figure out how the code will fit into your scenarion and how you will adjust it, "flavour" it ... and so on.

3. Stop being just one "sheep" from the herd, by taking stuff "as is" and thus pushing out there 34234234 copy-cats social networks, based on the default joomla template with the default template of EasySocial or Jomsocial ... or any other component for that matter.

4 Develop your scenario, your recipe, your service, your offerings, your problem solvings .... and start to look at EasySocial as a way to fullfill it by integrate it with YOUR OWN vision.

5. Leverage the open-source software .... don't take it AS IS and pushing out there thousands of joomla cloned social networks that all works the same, looks the same, feel the same and so on !

I agree, it's a lot of work, a lot of unsleeping nights, sometimes a lot of frustration, but in the end you will have YOUR OWN product built with the right open-source software.

Just my 2 cents !
Mist
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 17:59
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Interesting.... competition is never a bad thing. More ideas to get inspired from. Because it is new, its too early to judge them so early. Also since this topic is in SI forums, there will be biased views here.
Neel
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 18:55
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Well, you can't really compare EasySocial with those social networks out there and like Mist suggested, these sites are different niche. Those site's also has the upper hand where they got everything under their control unlike us, we are still constrained within your Joomla template and Joomla itself.

You should use EasySocial as a stepping stone and work your ways around it Rather than just installing a stock Joomla template and the extension and start thinking that you would lure investments in. It doesn't work that way
Mark
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Sunday, 30 November 2014 21:50
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This new network proves that people are starved for something different than yet another Facebook.

I believe the combination of EasyBlog 5, EasySocial 1.4 and EasyDiscuss 3 will be a far superior network to Ello and Tsu.

If I can accomplish the simplicity and feature set of Urbantimes.co Featured Page with the EasyBlog 5 publishing platform and then add in EasySocial as the Community social stream platform, and use EasyDiscuss as the Q&A knowledge engine, then I believe you will soon see StackIdeas products used as the basis of new unique networks that gather steam in the niche social contribution network arena.
Randall McCallum
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Tuesday, 02 December 2014 13:45
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Thanks for sharing this Randall
Mark
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Wednesday, 03 December 2014 11:16
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A site is only as good as the content and getting people to interact with each other and engage in discussions. I think "Paying people to post" will only go so far and probably short lived. Their will be people that post for pennies but I do not think most people will. I have NEVER heard of this network until tonight and was not impressed. (I just guessed at a someone's username/code: "sassy" and got right in)

Easysocial, with Easyblog, EasyDiscuss has so much more going for it. It just needs more templates!

I will say that I was REALLY put off by all the adds on TSU, just that would be a reason that I would not regularly visit their site. Keep your 20 cents, it's not worth it.
Chris Mathis
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Friday, 03 July 2015 14:04
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4 Develop your scenario, your recipe, your service, your offerings, your problem solvings .... and start to look at EasySocial as a way to fullfill it by integrate it with YOUR OWN vision.

Bingo! I've recently invested more than a few thousand dollars in 3rd party integrations to use within EasySocial. The 3rd party app framework on EasySocial makes endless possibilities and this was a big reason why I picked ES over JS. In order for you to attract regular user engagement you need to create a UNIQUE web experience. Use SI products as the base for your vision that will capture an online market.
John Leake
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Saturday, 04 July 2015 06:07
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Could you list a few of the 3rd party integrations, or post your Web link. Would love to see what you have done..
Chris Mathis
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Saturday, 04 July 2015 07:06
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@Chris, if you're talking to me I don't have a link yet, it's being developed. It's not about specific 3rd party extensions, it's about the idea you have. Once you have your idea, look for a 3rd party extensions that can be used to accomplish your plan, even if it needs modification or "supping up". If nothing exists, think about creating one and exactly how it would look and function inside an SI product. Find a niche web market that needs filling and use/create/modify an integration software for that purpose to use with SI products. But before you drop any money, make sure you have given it A LOT of thought and have a crystal clear vision of what you are trying to accomplish. Before I spent anything, I wrote a 52-page document detailing a clearly laid out plan for each view and app that I would need.
John Leake
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Saturday, 04 July 2015 10:29
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Thanks for sharing this John, appreciate your insights on this
Mark
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Tuesday, 07 July 2015 17:13
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