It's raining men social networks lately (Ello, Diaspora, Medium and many more) and most of them are bound to fail. Not because they don't have a compelling idea which drives them and makes them truly social, but because the network part is the hard part.
Networks need scale and they need it fast. Look at the one successful newcomer G +, which with all the backing of Google, after three years still struggles in getting your friends and family on board. A new social network like Ello will never reach the needed critical mass and will implode whatever the great intentions driving it.
However, there is a new kid on the block and it's capable of disrupting the social network sphere. Not with an appeal on your social values or a guarantee to stay clear of big business, but with a promise to fill your pockets.
Tsu (apparently pronounced Sue…) starts with a new paradigm. It's a platform for your content, posts/videos/photos stays yours (so no copyright transfers / hand over all your rights as usual) and it's monetized by you.
Now that's quite a revolutionary change. Try find another platform where you keep owning the content after you share it. Ah wait, your personal blog of course! Except that although the content stays yours, monetization is quite hard. Running successful adword campaigns on personal blogs is not that easy.
Tsu offers to take care of the ads in exchange for 10% of the revenue instead of your soul a lousy adword deal on a rarely visited blog. An interesting offer for quality content providers or not?
Well for most of us it means we would earn pennies a year so money is still not a compelling argument. If you care about your content you want foremost the best environment to present it and a network like G+ is hard to beat.
Great visuals, large and really interested audience, searchable and findable by Google search. What more could you want?
As an active content producer myself I would say there are things missing on facebook and G+. Just ignoring that neither of us is paid to post, what's missing are things like 'analytics'. How many eyeballs are seeing our posts? We don't know, we don't get the tools and only by very indirect tools like including an image in every post we get an impression if our post is read at all.
Sure since spring 2014 Google shows 'views' but it's not willing to tell us what it means. Seen in the stream, longer than 0.1 second, part of a WordPress default install or really clicked upon and seen by real people. Most of us got a bump of 100.000's or even tens of millions of views mid September. A week later they were gone.
We don't know. We are not allowed to know. All requests to clarify at least the September bump went unheard. Google is deaf for the one thing we content providers want most: feedback.
We stumble in the dark. We post and thanks to sites like +CircleCount we have a vague idea how many plusses (likes), shares and 'views' we got over time, but content producing on G+ is mostly feeding a black box. We can't expect Google to pay content providers for G+ content as long as they don't show ads on the network. Fair enough.
But why are we left in the dark in terms of engagement? If you run a Google owned blogger platform you get statistics and monetization options. If you run a YouTube channel you get detailed stats and a decent chance to make money out of it if you're successful so why is the social network G+ excluded from it?
I for one am happy to see a social network which solves this. I don't mind if I get 0.0001 cent per view or a quarter per comment although I would prefer the latter :), but I do appreciate that Tsu gives you real feedback. The availability of real analytics is in itself a reason to start posting there.
We all have an ego and want to see a reward for our content. Most of us are much more motivated by feedback than by upfront money, but a network which offers both is truly disruptive and deserves to grow
part two will delve deeper into Tsu and the apparently Multi Level Marketing model underlying it. My first impression: it's actually generating worth so no MLM, but they could take a lesson in basic math…
#Tsu #blogging #content #SocMed
interesting bug +Shaker Cherukuri did you follow http://www.tsu.co/MaxHuijgen ?
Just friended you there, +Max Huijgen. I'm finding myself kind of torn with this thing. The principles are awesome. Really awesome, and part of something that is really big and I think inevitable.
There are just some little things, like the family tree feature where revenues that you earn are split by those who preceded you and invited you into the network. That feels a little pyramid-like, and I really don't think that they needed to do that to turbo charge the take off of a network like this. I think that was a stupid decision that may haunt them.
The rest of it though, well, I'm waiting to see and trying not to judge. As I say, I think this is really important in principle.
Already on it …. tsu.co/dansoto
'[…] and thanks to sites like have a vague idea […]'
like what +Max Huijgen? 🙂 Did a plus-mention of +CircleCount go missing in your post? 🙂
No rush for me. I can wait for the shakeout. Maybe if there was one that wrote my updates for me, like a cross between Facebook and Taskrabbit…
Spot on +Filip H.F. Slagter corrected.
Just tried to cross-post this very post to tsu +Steve Faktor and lost all formatting and no clue how to edit the post now….
Ah well, teething problems not unlike Ello I guess, but if someone has the golden tip how to actually edit on Tsu I will follow you there in gratitude.
Yeah, I wasted a bunch of time just trying to get paragraph breaks, with no success, +Max Huijgen.
is deleting and starting anew the only option +Gideon Rosenblatt +Wade Harman ?
Yes, and I've confirmed +Max Huijgen, that it doesn't matter. No paragraph breaks or formatting.
I posted a few photos there +Max Huijgen I will see what happens in the next few days
+Edward Morbius you will probably want to have a look at this too. 🙂
It sure looks a lot better than ello (or hell-o as I like to call it).
No serious text then +Gideon Rosenblatt?
I think part of the reason Google refuses to monetize Plus in any way is that they want to make it completely unappealing to the sorts who would exploit it for profit without bringing value to the network.
Analytics and anything solid to track exposure are tools that some serious content creators might like, but overwhelmingly, these tools would be leveraged by marketers — and that's a demographic most users don't want to take root among us.
Based on the spam that Google has faced on Blogger, it's not hard to see why they'd not be keen to release such features on their social network. Remember, the majority of people use them to stay in touch with people they know and meet new people. It's very personal — it's supposed to be very personal. Numbers have a tendency to dehumanize and objectify. They shift the focus from building relationships to being enslaved by numbers. They shift posts from whatever you feel like sharing to what you think will perform.
They change the game. And from what I've seen, they don't change it for the better.
That's not to say content producers shouldn't be paid. I think we should, which is why I work to connect people, especially underrepresented populations, with editors who are able to pay. But I don't see social media as being a place for this.
The only thing I imagine not destroying the personal, relationship-focused ecosystem is a tip jar — a button on posts that users who connect their Google Wallets to their accounts can use to tip users who provide value to them. Since Google takes a cut of Wallet transfers, they wouldn't even have to take any sum over that to make a profit.
Of course, for that to work, Wallet would have to be fully functional worldwide, and not simply transfer to Play Store credits, as it does in some countries.
Please don't delete any more posts +Gideon Rosenblatt 🙂
Is money changing the game or feedback +A.V. Flox?
I would venture that the latter is – contrary to popular belief – the larger problem. We live in an attention economy and even G+ -free of it is of ads or commercial incentives – is flooded with little people looking for their moment in the spotlight.
I don't know about you but I have to work my way through tens of invites to silly communities, posts shared with me showing a profile photo of someone I don't know and after viewing don't want to know and most of all random 'endorsements' of posts I'm not interested in.
We live in a world where content is in abundance and thanks to social media sharing is the default.
No longer do people wonder if their content is worth the eyeballs of strangers, they demand and push it.
Not for the money as (unless I'm missing my personal route to millionaire status here) there is nothing to be gained on G+
And yet +A.V. Flox people share their content.
Respect, even an acknowledgement of existence is the prize so effectively G+ is spammed not for the money, but for the attention.
If an ideal network would balance this by valuing time / money in a better way I would support it.
Nope, +Max Huijgen.
Sorry again, +Christine DeGraff. You sure were a trooper on that one. 😉
Very good thoughts, +A.V. Flox. You're hitting on a very subtle and important point. This is very front of mind for me these days. I was just reading Arikia Millikan's 'resignation' post on Medium, and it's clear that there is something in the air right now about trying to compensate people for their contributions on these platforms – and it's tough to get right.
So, here's the thing I've been thinking about a lot of late: is there a difference between revenue sharing plans like this and earning equity in the platform as a result of our contributions?
To me, it feels subtly different and less subject to some of the negative effects that you're talking about. Equity is recognition for the contributions to the community and to the platform, and an ownership in their future. That ownership may pay off down the road through distributions of dividends, and it may not, depending upon the success of the platform and the community that it allows.
There's a lot more to this (this is something I'm really staring to explore much more deeply right now), but I'm just curious right now more on a feeling level, as to whether or not it feels different to you, or not. Because, I agree with what you're touching on above.
Just assume +A.V. Flox that you would get 0.000001 cents per post as a default, but on every 'flag down' by Google (or Tsu) you would loose 0.01 cent.
How long would it take to completely undermine the current attention struggle on social networks?
I do believe associating a monetary value to posting / social network presence could create feedback mechanisms leading to better content.
+Max Huijgen, you don't seem to understand how uneven the playing field is. If users could penalize people they don't like, it wouldn't be marketers who suffer. It would be women, LGBQT, people of color, etc. Sorry, but no.
Google Plus doesn't even have tools to deal with the harassment and intimidation we face now and that's without this feature. Introducing what you suggest would cripple the little progress these groups have managed to make here.
One thing that tsu will need to change to avoid another #nymwars or #genderwars, are their name fields (why still insist that everyone's name can be divided over 2 fields?) and their gender choices (not everyone associates with the male/female options available).
And it would be nice if they wouldn't force their Android app to use portrait mode…
I do like that they retain the capitalisation of my username though, contrary to services like ello and twitch.
+Gideon Rosenblatt, equity is complicated, because it tends to reward first adopters. Early adopters tend to be a specific kind of person — a type of which there is no shortage online. So this isn't going to be inclusive. It's just going to reward the big players and the handful of people who manage to defy the odds and get in there.
Having been an editor, I know the incredible content isn't really among the big names. I can't tell you how many hours I spent crawling around the internet (and mind you, I only covered one beat: relationships) to find them. Some of the best content is being produced by people no one's heard of — often not in massive quantities. Few people can sit down once a day and punch out something amazing — even when we get paid to do it!
A system that rewards based on quantity won't work for most people, who tend to go viral only a handful of times in their lives. If they don't have time to contribute value to a network regularly, equity won't give them jack.
Tipping is more inclusive because the CTA is part of the post, and as soon as you post, you can get started receiving, whether you got on the network upon launch or this afternoon, whether you post daily or just posted that one time. What's more, tipping is a gift from another user to you. It's still personal. There is no way to game it without hacking. Basically: it's useless to marketers.
Even better, because there is no "penalty," as +Max Huijgen suggested, it cannot be used as a tool of abuse.
No ads. No brands. Just people. People saying, "you know, thank you for this."
+Gideon Rosenblatt is correct, no post formatting as of yet.
+kevin topliffe
PS: +Max Huijgen, the value of G+ to me is the people I have met and continue to meet here. I don't post much because there are no moderation tools and that means that to maintain a safe space on my threads I have to be present and available to kill any comments that are abusive. G+ has a lot of work to do there. Posting should not feel so stressful.
That said, I do use G+ every day, mostly to comment. And I love that. Back on LiveJournal (15 or 14 years ago?! Really? Jesus), I had a rule that for every hour I spent on a blog post, I'd spend four commenting on other people's posts. Twitter changed me, turned me into more of a broadcaster. A single human doesn't scale. Once you start having so many replies that you have no time to post, respond and sleep, much less read anyone else's feed, there's no going back.
G+'s failure to provide good moderation tools has sort of reminded me how valuable it is to have days where I don't post, only respond to others. It's brought community back.
(Lesson relearned! I'd like better moderation tools now, pls.)
Mlm… Spam. You won't make money from this but you will spam your networks and make them (tsu)some for awhile…. Hopefully enough to get their vc back anyway….lol
How can a network that "gives away" 90% stay functioning? From a person who runs a social network… (Me)…
You can't.
I might not like Facebook… But they have huge security teams .. Servers and updates with their "profits"…. this is a doomed and failed model that prays on the human desire to "be rich with no effort"….
Shocked so many of you are jumping into the scam…
I like +A.V. Flox's idea of the tip jar. It makes perfect sense to let the reader compensate you if they can or wish to with regards to your G+ content. Wish the people that can make that happen read the comment thread.
Those are very thoughtful responses, +A.V. Flox. Thanks. Food for thought and much appreciated. The point about early adopters tending to be a certain type (witness the rapid adoption of Tsu and Ello by folks here) is a good one, and yes, those people would likely benefit from lower early valuations. That's something for me to think more on. The same with the point about the lack of predictability of our muses showing up for work each day on time.
What I will say though is that tipping still puts the burden of compensation on users. It does nothing to offset the concentrations of wealth that are happening through the success of these immensely powerful platforms publishing platforms, platforms that are essentially using a free labor force. That's the problem, as I see it.
To view Tsu as a social experience that we all know is correct. The socialness of this platform is engaging.
However, I think the revenue earnings will kill this network. When you start giving people this option, they start to sell themselves out for the money…therefore spam.
On that note, it is a great engager, however, people know that the algorithm to get "paid" is to be engaging and share each other.
Take that out, would Tsu be an engaging social site? Hmm, I am starting to highly doubt it, especially after some of the public shares I have seen there.
Seems fake
I'm sorry +A.V. Flox but I take offense with uneven the playing field is. If users could penalize people they don't like, it wouldn't be marketers who suffer. It would be women, LGBQT, people of color, etc. Sorry, but no
I have spoken out on behalf on most conceivable minority groups and got hate mail in return. I know what it is to defend points of view which are not 'American', tolerate homos or sympathize with black people.
Got the hate mail, got the cruel comments and know how good Google actually is in protecting us nowadays, but this is a statement I consider insulting.
I still have a day job restoring comments Google removes becauses of an over-active filter on 'spam' removing opinions which don't pass their filter of 'acceptable'.
I'm actually hurt that you suggest that I would endorse any system which could deprive minorities in any way. I do believe however that any system improving on the current G+ policy of establishing a Californian legal morality should be embraced.
I have always been sceptical of views as a metric here on plus but also impressions on Twitter. Plus does have ripples to measure a post but agree it lacks a robust metrics system. Have to say that Buzzfeed gives good metric.
I've read through most of the comments here and quite frankly, they're far more interesting than this fly by night network. The only – and I mean ONLY – thing Tsu is good for is underlining, highlighting, then circling how laughable the economics of content are. It shows how little each user, each piece of content is really worth in naked dollars and cents.
Only platforms can make money at that scale, even then it must be massive. Everyone else is a lowly serf and they better not forget it. Oh, and now they can't – as regular $0.00001 checks start rolling in.
Let's all admit, no matter how you slice it, you're interacting for fun or ego or narcissism, not cash. Otherwise, everyone here would die fast at these prices.
cc: +Max Huijgen +Gideon Rosenblatt +Alex Schleber +A.V. Flox +Catherine Maguire
+Gideon Rosenblatt, tipping doesn't put the buren of compensation on users — there is no "burden." There is no mandate forcing everyone to participate. You can tip if you wish to, or not.
Unless by "burden of compensation," what you actually mean is "who is supposed to pay me?"
If you are approaching this as someone who believes that you deserve to be paid for your writing, you need to stop posting on social media and start pitching editors. (And if they tell you they will pay you in "exposure," feel free to say "fuck you." And if they want to pay you based on the hits you generate, ask them how many pageviews their three poorest performing posts generated in the past 90 days before you even consider it. Paycheck-per-view is a special kind of hell you don't need to personally experience. Trust.)
(If you are in an underrepresented group and are reading this and are thinking "yes! I want to pitch something but who? And how?" feel free to get in touch with me and I will introduce you to people/pitch for you/help you edit your content/whatever you need. Everyone else, there are lots of tutorials online, feel free to Google.)
Basically, a social network is a place where you connect with people. It can be an aspect of a job, but fortunately, it mostly isn't (or we wouldn't be able to have half the frank conversations we do) — and I don't think it should be. I think people who create things should be able to live off their labors, yes, but I don't think monetization avenues should come at the cost of the ecosystem.
There are a number of tools creators can leverage right now (with some exceptions, which I will get to): crowdfunding campaigns, ebooks, etsy, YouTube, app stores, paying blog networks and content properties, etc. Many of these flow beautifully into social media, with people who use them taking into account what others on each network expect, and not abusing their generosity (by spamming requests for someone to donate to their Kickstarter, for instance).
The only creators right now who are suffering are people who create art, writing, films, etc., for adults (which may or may not necessarily be pornography). That's a whole other thing with no easy fixes — and I won't derail +Max Huijgen's thread with it. (If you are curious, you can read a recent article I wrote about this issue here: https://mikandi.com/blog/news/the-war-on-adult-content/ )
Until I see a network integrate a way for users to generate revenue that doesn't make that network a hub for marketers and black hats hoping to game the system, until the system is created in a way that takes into account the deeply rooted inequality among users that exist, and until the system is able to prevent or sufficiently penalize abuse by spammers and harassers, etc., so that it doesn't cause further disadvantages for certain populations, my answer is going to continue to be no.
Thanks again for the thoughtful response, +A.V. Flox.
The bigger picture on all this is that with each passing year, value is leaching from editorial efforts to the big aggregating platforms, like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This is happening because people are doing work for free and it's happening because platforms like BuzzFeed are actually doing more to monetize NYT content than the NYT itself (this, from the recently leaked strategy doc from NYT).
We are building these massive platforms for automating the publishing of content, and in that process, the people who own these platforms get richer and richer and the people's whose content is being aggregated find themselves with less and less.
As a related note, this little part of a piece regarding payments on Medium was very insightful:
"I signed a contract with The Obvious Corporation as a Collection Editor to be compensated at a rate of 5 cents per view for anything published in the LadyBits collection (with the rate decaying after certain traffic thresholds)."
https://medium.com/ladybits-on-medium/ladybits-first-and-last-year-on-medium-d3a1acb67ae4
I'm not saying that there aren't paying writing jobs – you would know far better than me on that front, but what I am saying is that I think those are going to get harder and harder to maintain – and that the momentum is for automation to strip more and more value from the publishing system and concentrate it into fewer and fewer hands.
+Max Huijgen, I'm not saying you don't care about inequality. I'm saying that if you can't see how this system would be used to further disadvantage some groups, you don't see how uneven the playing field is.
The greatest mistake an ally can make is to assume that the abuse he or she faces for speaking out is anything like the abuse the groups they're allied with face just for being. In addition, facing this abuse doesn't make you all-seeing. You missed how the system might be abused. I'm pointing it out. No one is saying you're an asshole. No one is saying you're a bad ally.
I'm just saying that in this conversation, in that comment, you were working from the belief that the playing field is even. It isn't.
As an aside +A.V. Flox _derailing_ my threads is impossible. Every post I make is and should be start of a discourse and a potential source of serendipity
Nevertheless I would still like to know how much better G+ inherently is. I still see very, very limited tools against an almost unstoppable influx of new commenters who don't exactly share my values nor are they willing to invest in a debate.
Again what if a comment would cost them a fraction of a set budget;. Wouldn't economy solve this at least partly?
+Steve Faktor as the economy holds even in extremely small numbers.
+Gideon Rosenblatt, writing is definitely a hard field to compete on. Writing for web right now is undergoing the battle newspaper reporters fought long ago — that of fair compensation. Right now, too many publications are happy to pay per piece turning everyone into a contractor who is basically expected to live off proceeds of their work without benefits or health insurance. This puts anyone who lives in a country without national health insurance at a disadvantage, for instance.
So the problem isn't that people are generating stuff for free (because their reach will vary no matter how good the content is, especially given its sporadic nature) so much as it is one about people with no other means of supporting themselves finding that they can't get basic needs met in the career they have chosen. Addressing that is partly a political issue (at least in the U.S.), and partly an industry issue. Rates are slowly making their way to something more reasonable, but there is still no certainty that you'll always sell as many pieces as you need in order to get by, even if you make your way in.
I haven't seen any automation yet that finds the stuff I want as well as editors do, in combination with the list of people that I've carefully curated on a number of networks, and my own ventures into the depths of the web. AI can tell you what something is about, it can even tell you what's hot, but it can't very usefully tell you what's worth your time. You need only look at What's Hot here, your Facebook news feed, and Google Now's "articles you should read" to sense that.
We'll get there, and hopefully by then there will be enough diversity in tech that this stuff won't all be relevant but only if you fit someone's idea of what you seem to be. (Example, until G+, Google was convinced I was male. Surely if you read about porn and video games you're male! Here's stuff about beer glasses and a Tesla! Great — I neither drink alcohol nor drive. Enter G+: Oh, whoops, you're female? Here, have some inspirational quotes.)
As +Amanda Blain points out, it's not easy to maintain a network. The trade-off we make to be able to connect to one another and access our content again after creating it is present in every agreement we accept in order to participate. Facebook shows us ads. Gmail and Google show us ads. That's the cost of entry. Just as it's important for people who write to make a living, it's important for people who labor on the backend of networks to make one. I'm glad Facebook is making money. I hesitate to invest in networks that may not.
We tell one another that things that go online stay online forever. But I've been online for almost 20 years and let me tell you — I've lost a lot of content because networks couldn't stay afloat. No one seems to remember GeoCities.
+Max Huijgen, no, I don't think it would. G+ needs to invest in reporting tools that enable comment moderation, at least as well as they do on YouTube, if not better, and they need to think carefully about policy. Right now, they don't hesitate to take down something even vaguely resembling some indescribable idea of "adult" content, but if someone shows up saying they want to kill you, ohhhhh, well, um, er, free speech and all that, just block them.
It's broken. Not just here, but on every network. Policy needs to evolve to understand that not all users have the same threat model. They don't get this. And they need to. Paying users would not alter this. Only policy and enforcement can. And that policy can't be something ham-fisted like "make everyone use a 'real' name!" or anything that heightens risk for already at-risk populations.
You inadvertently got to the heart of the matter by saying YouTube is performing better than G+ with regards to moderating tools +A.V. Flox
YouTube became a commercial enterprise. Users make money and moderation tools matured to keep up with the demands of a commercial world.
G+ is no mans land. Broken. No moderation tools. Well admittedly some, but they don't scale.. I have just 60k+ plus followers, but I do enjoy a nice engagement rate, meaning on most of my post comments disappear because of Google's automagic – and severely failing – spam removal.
I check all these false positives and they are indeed false. Not one of them so far is actual spam. The majority are opinions which are not mainstream, but not radical/extremist or whatever. Just people thinking different.
I have to restore them all in a long winded manual process of reviewing one by one.
At the other other hand I get daily requests to join a weird community or to read a post shared with me. Often contrary to my values, but Google doesn't protect me from them.
Instead I'm expected to click a box that I don't want to see more of their content, confirm that decision and click again to go through the rest of my list of notifications.
A lot of wasted time and mostly at the expense of an active content sharer with an opinion which deviates from the average.
Any, really any, economic model would help solve this. Currently there is no value in profiles. It''s less work to create them than it takes me to block/report or ignore them.
That's a failing economy. You and me should spent say 1 second to get rid of spam, hate or threats versus an investment of our enemies of at least a minute if not more.
G+ fails in moderation tools. Every economy would do better…. +A.V. Flox
+Max Huijgen, it may be difficult to understand why money wouldn't help equalize the field, so let me bring up a few points with noting from recent events:
When you look at the two main targets of GamerGate hatred, you'll find two women who received recognition for their work in the form of monetization avenues. For some people, GamerGate is about journalistic ethics, but for many more, it's about two women making money from something they should not. This has led to increased threats and abusive behaviors that prevent at least one of them from going back to her own house.
Visibility is often weaponized against underprivileged groups. This means that it's incredibly risky to be a prominent figure if you are not a member of the privileged group and overwhelmingly, this affects women, people of color, LGBTQ. The logic goes like this: "well, you put yourself out there so this is your fault, and anyway, you're getting famous because you're being harassed, so I'm not only not causing you harm without reason, but I'm also helping you!"
Without policy, any member of a group who gains visibility and financial backing from a monetized site is likely to experience a backlash of "you don't really deserve it, we're going to drive you offline."
This is why I'm saying money won't solve anything. Money doesn't make people act more decently. It never has. In fact, a pageviews system would actively benefit people involved in harassment. How many people have read the Reddit and 4chan threads full of GamerGate vitriol? How many people have read that awful blog written by Zoe Quinn's ex? How many people devoured coverage about that game where users got to beat Anita Sarkeesian?
Too. Fucking. Many.
+Max Huijgen, that's incorrect. Moderation on YouTube was something implemented when it integrated with Google Plus so we wouldn't have to deal with the idiocy that network tends to generate. Google knows it's an cess pool — integration was seen as a way to improve it, but they also knew that they couldn't just dump that crap into Plus, so they enabled tools to help YouTube creators decrease that likelihood.
Sadly, more than a few creators on there don't know how to use them or can't be bothered, which is why some video posts here do bring down the IQ level by at least eight orders of magnitude.
You seem to believe Google isn't profiting from Plus so they don't feel like they should care about better tools. I think Google is one of the few companies that can do without generating massive profit in every venture — and they do, all the time. What, exactly, is the revenue model for Street View tours of the Taj Mahal? The Arabian desert? An archive of the world's street art?
If we want better tools, we need to continue lobbying for them. We have to remind Google (and other networks), constantly, that the user isn't always the person they assume it is. Tech codes what it knows. Until tech is more diverse, they'll keep getting this wrong. Here, at least, Google has shown that it is willing to listen and change.
(If Facebook's apology over its real name policy becomes a full retraction, they will show that they, too, can be made to listen.)
+A.V. Flox We agree on Money doesn't make people act more decently
but not paying Zoe or Anita in the first place would have made things worse. Gamergate would probably exist whatever the money flow, but having an income does help if you have to defend yourself.
Just assuming Gamergate would have played out on Tsu, it would primarily have been Zoe and to a lesser extent Ainta who would profit most from the views.
The white, male, old bloke assaults were diverse so not tied to one account so they would'n have profited from the Tsu model.
Too. Many.Fucking. Economic. Diaspora.
+Max Huijgen This is worse than Quora.
I'm presented with a non-dismissible registration dialog. If I remove that via the element inspector, I still cannot see page content.
This site is dead to me. It can pleasure itself for all I care.
It's repeating the same damned error that G+ and Ello make. Rather than simply presenting the damned content and making a credible argument on its merits to participate, it throws up roadblocks.
Really, that's so beyond utterly effing annoying.
Crap like that earns /etc/hosts entries (e.g., zero-routed site).
More good thoughts, +A.V. Flox. The way I see it is that these platforms may one day get to the point when the AI is doing decent editorial decision-making, but that's going to take a lot of training… by us, the people formerly known as the audience. In the meantime, the automation is more about making us the editorial filters, and doing so as efficiently and effectively as possible. These are giant platforms aimed at pushing labor outside of the organization, to end users, people who, tradition suggests, don't need to be paid.
But at some point, that argument collapses in on itself, when income dry up.
And, no, it's not easy to maintain these networks, until suddenly, it is. A critical mass is reached, the fly wheel builds momentum and they start making money. A lot of money. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that they are easy to run. I'd hate to be in Zuckerberg's shoes. I'm sure it's a brutal job. But what I am satin is that it starts to get a lot easier to not just make money, but to make profits. Twitter's not there yet and neither is LinkedIn, but Facebook and Google are, and LinkedIn will be soon. And this is really my point. It's not really the people who labor on the back ends of these systems that these profits are primarily serving. Sure, they make a living, a really good living, especially if they're lucky enough to get options. But that's not what our current system is designed for; it's designed to such these profits out of the network and into the hands of shareholders, through dividends and stick buy backs to boost share prices and capital gains for a very small percentage of the population.
This is the problem I am fixated on right now. I just can't seem to let go of it. And while I agree that it's also going to take some policy and political interventions to address it, I'm also digging for some market approaches for shifting the way that equity works. Reddit just announced some really bold moved in this direction. There's no guarantee that it'll work, but I'm super excited to see them trying.
True +Edward Morbius As usual I used one of my throw away pseudonyms to have a look before registering with an invested pseudonym, but you're right: it's not accessible from search and a closed world.
+Max Huijgen If the idea is to allow for the promotion of works, well …. it's got to actually effing promote the effing works.
WTF are they smoking?
+A.V. Flox I'd really like to see more from you on the editorial acquisition process.
Elsewhere I've been musing on the size of early social networks. There's a huge amount of nostalgia for Usenet, but it was already getting really creaky as the public Internet was opening up in the early/mid 1990s. I'm guesstimating that it was probably in the ~single digit millions at the time (500k – 10m roughly), with what had been a pretty heavily gated and selected community (colleges, academic, research institutions, governments, a handful of techs).
The payoff to opening it up to the world was … less than spectactular. Something the Singularitarinarnutians might want to keep in mind.
I'm also looking at earlier examples of social networks, which excludes the Letters sections of various publications in which (highly selected and curated) discussions used to take place.
Makes me wonder if there isn't in fact some maximal upper-bound to the size of a useful ideas network.
What is the advantage of a searchable and open network +Edward Morbius Yes for Google and possibly for FB, but your everyday run of the mill network?
Why?
Tsu makes a big deal of the 'bring your own network deal' and the consequential ownership. I'm cynical on the statements, but as as business model it seems to make sense.
A social network that Robert Scoble isn't on! Hooray!
Obligatory http://xkcd.com/792/
+Max Huijgen To quote what a wise man once said: "Networks need scale and they need it fast."
Blocking out the (being exceptionally charitable here) 99.9986112% of the world which isn't already on Tsu seems to directly thwart that aim.
Pissing off those who would tend to be productive and valued contributors likewise.
Frankly, this whole concept is sufficiently stupid I'm muting out.
No serious formating…
+Max Huijgen Is this one a proprietary silo like Ello / G+ / Facebook, or does it interoperate with the distributed social standards established by Friendica, Diaspora, etc.?
+Woozle Hypertwin Well there's no RSS/Atom, and no obvious API.
As I feared. 😛
+A.V. Flox +Max Huijgen +Gideon Rosenblatt +Steve Faktor et al. – VCs, i.e. those people that think about these things FOR A LIVING… will happily tell you that Startups are nearly impossibly hard (only about 15 out of 4,000 per year will be the really large break-outs, asf.), and that Content startups (not including UGC) are about 10x HARDER.
Why is this so? Simple economic laws about supply (infinite) and demand (limited, near static attention). In case anyone needs a reminder/intro:
businessmindhacks.com/post/from-kevin-kellys-the-satisfaction-paradox-on-why-curation-will-be-the-only-thing-youll-still-pay-for
If you're trying to make money writing stuff, unless it is stuff that is somehow demonstrably creating asymmetric information advantages that will make somebody real $$, possibly less than an hour from now (AKA Bloomberg trader terminals etc.), you are theoretically in a race with EVERY other person on the entire Internet capable of stringing together sentences in the English language, and hitting the "Publish" button on some sort of blog/CMS (whether it be your own WP blog, or the NYT's CMS is irrelevant).
There is ZERO scarcity, no matter how good you think your writing is (and it may be very good, but that just doesn't matter). It's all edutainment=entertainment at core, and *anybody's choice toward one or the other will at best be an aesthetic one.*
If you look at it from an Archetype (branding) perspective, the guiding principle of most Products is The Titan archetype, which has "superpowers" as one of its facets (the others are the Crucible/Contest/War, and Greatest Height/Expanse/Force). And reading/writing stuff on the Internet was maybe a superpower of sorts in 1995-2000, but increasingly less so since.
So it just doesn't (in the vast majority of cases) work as a Product that people would be willing to pay money for. Period.
Thinking of a social network as a for-profit business is a mistake to begin with, if you ask me. It should be thought of as a public service, where revenue should be considered only as a means of making it sustainable.
P.S. Content musings:
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-full-stack-media-relay-304e50ed1da1
http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/64463-atavist-books-to-close.html
http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/20/ranked-all-32-billion-dollar-mobile-internet-start-ups-report/
A non-UGC, word-based (NOT music) Content play is NOT among them…
+Alex Schleber To put a finer point on it, a small percentage of people will support content they enjoy at nominal rates, eg Patreon or Kickstarter (also Google '1000 true fans'). But the vast majority now relies on getting enough critical mass to attract advertisers. Most will not achieve it unless it's in very profitable micro segments.
+Max Huijgen, I think you very badly want monetization and that's fine. But I think that painting it as something that would somehow "help" victims of harassment is ignorant.
+Gideon Rosenblatt, I suspect yours may be an issue with capitalism in general rather than technology in particular.
+Edward Morbius, the problem of arguing for networks gated to prevent the uneducated access is that it results in the elitist erasure of the issues facing people not like you. That's not something I'm ever going to be nostalgic for, sorry.
I'm happy to tell you about the acquisition process in more detail, what do you want to know?
+Alex Schleber, I guess my writing is just demonstratively creating some kind of asymmetric information advantages, then. Semen-textured lube — who knew it's so crucial to economic progress?!
+A.V. Flox, I'm not sure if +Edward Morbius will read your reply, as he mentioned in his last post in this thread that he was muting out.
Also… Semen-textured lube? O_o is there a recent post of yours I missed?
+Filip H.F. Slagter, I'm sure he knows where to find me if he has a very pressing need to examine my take on editorial acquisition.
+Filip H.F. Slagter, not particularly recent, but I felt compelled to pull out the most seemingly-ridiculous example of something that was very excitedly received when pitched.
(In short, yes, it exists, with manufacturers fighting by introducing samples that look, feel, even smell like the real article for use with products that involve elaborate ejecting mechanisms, including instructions for how to warm it so it remains at body temperature.)
From my experience, ear-burns (from non-muted individuals) still create notifications, even on a muted post.
Oh, that's good to know +Woozle Hypertwin; didn't know that and always kinda wondered about that.
+A.V. Flox yes, I was actually thinking about the example of your (expertly done) writing, and what factors therein lead to a workable Archetype "mix".
These mixes are hard to get just right and pull off by conscious design (kind of like art/fashion), but yours includes at least The Siren and The Wise One ("sage advice" asf.), a combination that is rare. And yes, people likely at a deeply unconscious level (or not so unconscious, but it IS the "selfish gene" after all…), view anything related to their or others' sexual prowess in the widest sense as a "superpower" of sorts.
If you've never seen it, here is a link to my Archetype Branding matrix slide deck:
http://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7dsQ4IySPbqbkc2ZTlIZDNtMXc/edit?usp=sharing
(Powerpoint Show .PPS file, needs download)
Look specifically for the "Fascination" slides around slide 45 or so.
+A.V. Flox I don't believe I said monetization would cure the world, but it's an effective and established feedback mechanism. I was comparing with G+ where moderation tools are underwhelming and years of asking for better tools were basically fruitless.
I won't go on record saying that harassment would be stopped by a monetized network, but if posters were shareholders of the network basic 101 economy says that providing a safe climate for both sexes would be profitable.
I don't have the figures at hand but I believe women are more active users than men of social networks. You wouldn't say so if you look at the the weak moderation tools in existence.
what will be the mode of payment …….to all who will qualify for a pay.
at the moment a bank check according to the FAQ
+Alex Schleber, that's not actually rare though. I mean, there are tons of wise sirens out there. It's about negotiation and business, too. Which brings us back to +Max Huijgen's original point — should we expect payment for generating views for networks?
I know where he's coming from, but networks have bigger fish to fry to be what they want to be. Pivoting at this point, when things are this uneven, is not going to be for the benefit of all users. Only some, if that. And that's not something I can sign on for.
+Max Huijgen, I still disagree that economics would help. But I do agree that Google+ needs to work on its reporting mechanisms.
+A.V. Flox +Max Huijgen BTW, as if on cue, the last few days has seen a flurry of Big Old News Media hand-wringing around the question of the content-syndication/profit-share offer that FB just made to "the news media", which led to a fiery post from David Carr:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/business/media/facebook-offers-life-raft-but-publishers-are-wary.html
Ben Thompson of Stratechery is putting a damper on their pipe-dreams with some excellent analysis (2nd half, 1st half is the intro that sets up the "Smiling Curve" concept):
http://stratechery.com/2014/publishers-smiling-curve/
"… [quoting Carr:] “The traffic they send is astounding and it’s been great that they have made an effort to reach out and boost quality content,” said one digital publishing executive, who declined to be identified so as not to ruffle the feathers of the golden goose. “But all any of us are talking about is when the other shoe might drop.”
*Here’s the thing: the shoe has in many respects already dropped.* When people follow a link on Facebook (or Google or Twitter or even in an email), the page view that results is not generated because the viewer has any particular affinity for the publication that is hosting the link, and it is uncertain at best whether or not their affinity will increase once they’ve read the article.
If anything, the reader is likely to ascribe any positive feelings to the author, perhaps taking a peek at their archives or Twitter feed.
Over time, *as this cycle repeats itself and as people grow increasingly accustomed to getting most of their “news” from Facebook (or Google or Twitter), value moves to the ends,* just like it did in the IT manufacturing industry or smartphone industry:
[Smiling Curve chart]
On the right you have the content aggregators, names everyone is familiar with: Google ($369.7 billion), Facebook ($209.0 billion), Twitter ($26.4 billion), Pinterest (private). They are worth by far the most of anyone in this discussion.
Traditional publishers, meanwhile, are stuck in the middle. *The New York Times, the most august publisher of all, is worth a mere $2.03 billion. Gannett Company, the largest publisher in the United States, is worth $7.14 billion,* but the vast majority of that value lies in their broadcast and digital advertising holdings; most of the newspapers are worthless.
…
In short, publishers (all of them, not just newspapers) don’t really have an exclusive on anything anymore. They are Acer, offering the same PC as the next guy, and watching as the lion’s share of the value goes to the folks who are actually putting the content in front of readers.
That Stratechery article, by the way, was about how *German publishers were taking Google to court to demand compensation for article snippets that appeared on Google News. Instead Google simply removed the snippets,* which resulted in such a drop in traffic that the publishers this week came crawling back asking Google to re-add the snippets, no compensation required.
The general takeaway is that Google proved it was adding value to the publishers, but I have a different angle: *the publisher’s demonstrated that they provide no value to their writers.*
"—
I know nobody likes to hear terms like "worthless", but the numbers pretty much speak for themselves.
Dave Winer chimed in with 2 quick takes well worth reading:
scripting.com/2014/10/27/whatDoesFacebookWant.html
scripting.com/2014/10/28/aRoadmapForTheNewsIndustry.html
+Alex Schleber, that anyone is surprised by the idea that home pages are over and social media is critical is a little … lol?
+A.V. Flox well, tell that to the old media/publishers/etc. execs… the #dinomedia has been most firmly in denial for the longest time of course…
+Alex Schleber, oh, believe me: I do!
Curious #forscience what amount of revenue are you tsu folks at?
I'm at $3.03 +Amanda Blain while a handful of the most active people are now closing in on $100.
I saw a video that was not legit… But not seen a person make 100 yet. So was seriously just curious where some people I trust were at.
A whopping $0.10 per post in my case 😉 I made about 30 posts and have 100 friends, 702 followers, 16763 views, 760 likes and 313 comments.
At least three $100 (or almost) cases which I'm a 100% sure of +Amanda Blain
Out of 700k of users at least? Horrible odds. I agree 3.03 is more than FB has paid you… but have your thoughts at all now changed about the site? Was it worth the spamming of your network to make that $3.03?
I didn't think I was spamming my network. I comment and write on everything that interests me and the concept of Tsu fascinates me
Where did I write that anyone would get rich from it +Amanda Blain You know better….
Well out of the last 30 or so posts you posted on G+ you posted your link/about Tsu about 10 times. Pretty important topic for you. https://plus.google.com/u/0/112352920206354603958/posts/3h7aNZozNiD That post that started it from you talks all about the monetization. If I misunderstood and it is not about money… then im not sure why this post talks about all these numbers.
I think perhaps that what most people did not realize is that Advertising dollars is not what keeps social networks going. It produces very little revenue. Which people are now seeing clearly. The average facebook user is actually only worth about 7$ in revenue a year… (and thats only north america) http://www.statista.com/chart/2175/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user/
+Amanda Blain just FYI, FB's revenue run-rate is now at about $10 global ARPU ($3.2B revenue for Q3 / 1.3B active users = $2.46 per user per quarter), and will likely rise from there. See here:
businessinsider.com/facebook-q3-earnings-2014-10
While you are correct that non-US/-Western users don't nearly return $10/year (more like $1-2/year, don't have link to most recent charts handy), that implies that the say 300M or so Western (or equivalent, Japan users say) users are returning far more than the $10 ARPU.
E.g. rough math: 1,000 Million * $2 + 300M * x = $13,000M
-> x = $11,000M / 300 = $36.7 "Western ARPU"
Which really isn't too shabby at all, no? I think you may have been mixing up annual vs. quarterly in the Statista post.
Facebook now makes money from being publicly traded as well. But my point is.. If you are worth even 20$ a year in ad revenue… You won't even be making 3$ a month in revenue long…. Because not even facebook is per user…why on earth would tsu?
+Alex Schleber and +Amanda Blain, having dug into the Tsu numbers a bit for an article I wrote on this very topic a couple weeks ago, I'm coming to one semi-depressing conclusion, and it tends to support your point, Amanda (as much as I wish it didn't).
Let's say the ARPU is $40 per year and that that number were increase by a factor ten over the next several years so that it's ten times the advertising revenues per head of what it is today: it'd still be just $400 per year.
The only way for this to make a meaningful difference is for that revenue to become concentrated in some way. That's what Tsu's pyramid does (and I ran some simple calculations in that article to show the effect). You need other users below you in the pyramid in order to generate meaningful royalties on Tsu. Take this pyramid phenomenon up a notch in scale, and you have shareholders. Zuckerberg's just the most extreme version of this given his concentration of shares.
In other words, it's hard for the average user to make a meaningful amount of money from their own work on Facebook. But because of the huge numbers involved, if you can take a cut on other people's work, that little bit of a lot of people turns into a lot of money.
What's the discussion? Did Tsu ever offer to provide a sustainable income? Or an equal pay-out?
Their model is based on re-distribution of the 'royalties' (ad income) over the contributors. The exact amount is irrelevant, the pyramid model not valid.
A person signing up at a 'low level' (even the wording is wrong, but anyway) could make much more money than someone at the top level.
Say a very far grandchild of mine convinces +Madonna to sign up. Madonna's posts generate millions of views so she (and not I) gets paid accordingly. Not an average of $10, but possibly millions.
If she is just four 'generations' below me I would get 1% of her revenues. My hypothetical very far grandchild would get 30% of the millions of Madonna.
So if there is a pyramid in the Tsu pay-out system it's a reverse one.
+Gideon Rosenblatt +Amanda Blain +Alex Schleber
+Amanda Blain Facebook makes money form being publicly traded????
And what do you mean with 'facebook is not per user'?
And if 'Advertising dollars is not what keeps social networks going' what does???
+Amanda Blain I wasn't making any other assertions other than correcting the FB ARPU number in terms of Global vs. US vs. Emerging Economies asf.
I don't think any publicly traded company is allowed to include their share price gains/fluctuations under (gross) revenue.
How do you figure it's a reverse pyramid, +Max Huijgen? Not following that.
No doubt the pyramid peters out into pyramid dust by the fifth generation, but the calculations I did from a few people's actual revenues showed that the network size does have a significant impact, even though it may only matter at 2-3 generations.
Even then, it's not huge payouts, but it could amount to something significant for a portion of the base that happens to have a solid network of 2-4 generations right below them.
Facebook exists on Venture Capital folks. Facebook had no choice but to go public because SEC law of already having privately more than 500 shareholders. Ie… Facebook got Venture Capital.. and lots of it.. for many many many years well before it went public… the going public was to keep getting more capital… (http://fortune.com/2012/02/08/facebook-already-went-public-you-werent-invited/) That and partnership deals with Zynga and other companies like Microsoft… is where faceybook makes money(or did for the first 10 year of existence). I am not saying that advertising means nothing. $2.96 billion is a nice point, But it is and has been the 2nd most popular website in the world for the last few years… even the 100th most popular wont be making ANYWHERE near that…(tsu has peaked and is dropping at about 7,000 – http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tsu.co) and for facebook to get there… It did NOT do it on advertising alone.
Tsu founders have already released their plans to be a groupon/paypal clone and keep your Tsu dollars in the site with similar "partnership and get a discount/coupon" type deals…
Honestly.. the amount of slack i got for posting this article… I really want to just see how people are doing…I have no issue admitting if I was incorrect… but my "hunch" seems to be on track. People spamming everyone and making pennies for their efforts. The hoopla is already dying down.
'Posting this article' ? +Amanda Blain I thought I posted this?
BTW: You lashed out criticizing my affiliate links by hugely exaggerating the number of Tsu posts I made on G+. I let it go, but was disappointed in you.
Your comments about the financial structure of FB and Tsu makes no sense. FB makes over $10 billion thanks to advertizing and the running costs are a fraction of it. FB is living proof social networks can and do exist by the grace of ad money.
That it currently is a very small network isn't relevant to this discussion. FB and Twitter grew slower. Did you really expect it to be anywhere close to FB in a month?
+Gideon Rosenblatt reverse pyramid seen from the pay-out structure.
Networks of family and friends won't get you anywhere financially.
I counted +Max Huijgen i might have missed one or two.. but it was not a lash out or exaggeration.. those are the numbers on your G+ public profile. 30/10. And i was speaking in reference to my Blog post on the topic of Tsu being a scam. I'm trying to be objective and fair and keep it updated with facts. You Max, were a big supporter here on plus so I wanted an update about your monetization findings. It was not my intent in any way to insult or offend.
I've said my piece… i'll leave this be. Have a nice night everyone.
Ok, you got me to counting them. I spent 5 posts on Tsu, 7 on G+ and one on Ello in the last 50 posts. 37 on other topics. Not exactly a bombardment. +Amanda Blain
+Max Huijgen I'm guessing +Amanda Blain meant her article on http://www.amandablain.com/tsu-scam-things-to-consider/
She clarified this just now +Filip H.F. Slagter
After getting a +1 notification on one of my earlier comments, it makes me wonder if anyone is still actually using tsu and if some people are actually making some form of a side-income with it. Tbh, I highly doubt it.
+Filip H.F. Slagter, I love these rare opportunities to follow up.
+A.V. Flox I do think it says enough about Tsū that:
— I haven't used my own profile since the first week I heard about it
— I'd forgotten all about Tsū for quite some time now
— I haven't seen the network mentioned elsewhere online or in traditional media
— You still seem to need an account via invite to even read people's posts.
— +Max Huijgen hasn't been posting about it ;p