Every so often, a new social media pops up, makes some noise, and then, most of the time, fades away after a couple of months.

The newest contender is Tsu. As far as names go, it ranks pretty high on punability, which is fun.

What’s Tsu?

Tsu, at the moment, looks like a mix between Twitter and Facebook, with an asymmetrical follow system like Twitter, as well as a double-approve friend system like Facebook. It’s got more graphic design going on than the incredibly stark ello.

What makes Tsu different from the fifty-zillion other social media sites?

The major difference between Tsu and other social media sites is how it treats content and equity. Tsu acknowledges that users are content creators, and that engagement with the site comes from users. And not only does Tsu accept that users are content creators, it’s giving equity for content. Shares and views and likes and comments build your equity with Tsu.

This admission of users as content creators is good on its own, but adding equity on top of that makes me far more interested in using Tsu than even the more warm-fuzzy-feelings of Ello.

Features

Sharing is already more intuitive and effective than Ello’s sharing, and responding in-thread is very easy. It shares pictures fairly well, but there is no edit function to clean up typos.

Sharing outside of Tsu is very limited, since Tsu is currently in a beta form, and even content that’s been shared publicly isn’t really public except to people with Tsu accounts.

Summary

It’s still early days with Tsu, and so far, most of my network are other writers, so its utility for discovery and engagement is somewhat limited, but we shall see.

If you want to check out Tsu, you can join the advance guard here.