ello, I Love Tsu, Won't You Tell Me Your Name

Almost as if right on queue a couple of new social networks have arrived in recent months. The last time I found myself between full time assignments, Google+ captured my attention and consumed a significant portion of my free time.

Perhaps I have missed some, and surely others will come along in time. But let me share some initial impressions of ello and Tsu.

ello popped up and when one of my good friends from Google+ days invited me to participate I thought I would give it a go. Signing up was quick and easy and I was in. It took all of about ten seconds to realize this was not a feature rich environment. In fact, I characterize the interface as rather spartan.

To be fair, I tinkered a bit, was not overly impressed and have not returned since. While I was "tickled" frequently for a few weeks, I have not received any recent notices of a new post or invitation to return. It seems to me activity there is quite low.

The promise of ello is a new place to interact with others of like minds without the fear of your content or data being exploited for financial gain. The operators promise the basic service will be free forever. They will never sell advertising on the site, nor sell data about their subscribers to anyone. Their plan is to up-sell with special features so compelling you will be happy to pay for them. This is a familiar business model sometimes called the freemium model.

Tsu, on the other hand, has a rather different approach. They will sell ad space and hope your content will attract eyeballs and drive revenue just like some other social networks we all know and love. The difference, though, is the 90 / 10 revenue sharing model. Yes, 90% of the revenue driven by your content will be credited to your 'bank' while the operators are only keeping 10% of it.

The interface looks like the what you would get if Google+ and Facebook got together and had a baby. It is very similar in appearance with a multi-dimensional stream, right side ad bar, and several other familiar features and functions including the like, share, friend and follow constructs.

I like Tsu and plan to continue to have fun with it, posting faux proverbs and the occasional story, graphic or video people might find amusing. I want to see just how many pennies I can accumulate under this novel business model.

Has someone finally come up with the magic to compete with Facebook? Will this new upstart grow fast and prosper, while its participants also prosper?

You can click here to sign up, explore and decide for yourself.

Captain Joe

Follow me on Twitter @JPuglisiLLC