Type of business Private Area served Worldwide | Available in English | |
 | ||
Type of site Social networking service Founded July 1, 2013
(3 years ago) (2013-07-01) Headquarters New York City, New York, US | ||
Tsū was an online social networking service launched October 21, 2014. Tsū was created by Evacuation Complete, LLC, a Texas corporation, which was founded on February 7, 2008 by Sebastian Sobczak. Evacuation Complete's founder was Sebastian Sobczak who then partnered with cofounders Drew Ginsburg and Thibault Boullenger as first employees, and the site was headquartered in New York City. Similar to Facebook in its incipient stages, tsū was open by invitation only. The site went "dark" in August 2016.
Contents
Like Facebook, after registering to use the site, users were able to create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, post status updates and photos, and receive notifications when others updated their profiles. Tsu differentiated itself from competitors by allowing its users to maintain ownership of their content and related monetization.
The inspiration for Tsū came from the story of Ed O'Bannon, the lead plaintiff in O'Bannon v. NCAA, an antitrust class action lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association regarding the association's use of the images of former student athletes for commercial purposes.
Unlike other social networking sites, Tsu paid its members a share of its ad revenue for posting and sharing content. The chance to earn money from social networking led to an early explosion of numbers joining the site. The site was always free and the membership structure was invite-only akin to how startup social networks are formed, where initial members invite friends and colleagues. Similar to YouTube, the payout threshold was $100. Members were encouraged to donate their earnings to a number of charities who set up profiles on the service.
In September 2015, Facebook blocked links to the site, citing complaints that Tsu members were spamming to recruit members. Tsū and much of the digital media community speculated this was motivated by fear of competition. After receiving widespread backlash from digital media companies and executives including the likes of Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore, in December 2015 Facebook lifted the prohibition.
Accolades
In the months after initial launch tsū became one of the fastest growing social networks, achieving 3.5 million registered users in its first 6 months of public existence and registering 4.5 million users by its first anniversary. By comparison, Facebook registered its one-millionth user in month 10 after launch and it took Twitter approximately 24 months to register its one-millionth user. In October 2015, roughly one year after its public launch, tsū won Make-A-Wish Foundation's Media Partner of the Year award, besting publicly held companies such as Disney and Univision which were both past winners.
Decline
Although membership grew explosively on launch, it did not last. The likely reason is that too many members joined to make money rather than for the social network, and membership declined swiftly when earnings did not live up to expectations.
Shutdown
Tsu "went dark" on August 2, 2016, its front page being replaced with a message from Sobczak stating that "our mission of changing the social landscape for the benefit of the content creator has passed" and that users would have until August 31 to download their content.