Where I blog now

 Anyone who followed this blog will not have seen an update for a long time. I moved to a blockchain platform that is now known as Hive. I get a lot of engagement there as well as earning from it. Let me know if you want to join up as I can create accounts.

Steem Powered

So, Tsu is dead. Last week the site shut down leaving hundreds of users wondering what they should do now. A lot of them won't get the money they had accumulated as it's not up to the payout threshold. They have added the ability to download your posts and photos. The posts are in xml and json format, so it will depend on whether you can do anything with those. I may file them away somewhere for future reference, but it's better if old posts can stay on-line. Tsu posts were not included in Google results, so they are of little value now.

There's discussion on the Tsu Forum about other sites that pay. I'm not really interested in those that just have pictures and/or short posts. I did that on Tsu, but I really prefer longer-form blogging. I'd heard about Steemit a while back. It's based around blockchain technology and has its own cryptocurrencies. I'm still trying to understand how these work, but you earn some based on how many votes your posts get. It's not based on views as the site does not carry advertising apart from on the search page. You can run mining software on your PC, but they discourage running it on multiple machines by requiring that each has your private key (used as a password). If anyone else gets that they could take your money. They also discourage speculation by limiting how quickly you can take money out.

When you look at the homepage you will see posts that show a value of thousands of dollars. That's certainly impressive. It seems to depend on getting votes by 'whales' who hold a lot of currency as their votes have more influence. Comments also have a value, so it's worth making good comments. I'd hope nobody is voting up 'nice' comments.

I am getting comments from bots. Steemit iswas fairly open for developers. The code for the site is open source and people can access the blockchain of posts to produce their own stats.This post lists a few plus a Chrome extension that gives you notifications. The site itself is lacking some of the features you would expect. There are notifications. You can follow people, but can't go straight to their feeds. Perhaps they are relying on others to add to it. This may be an opportunity for me to find some programming projects to work on.

Unlike Tsu you can pay into your account using Bitcoin. I had a small amount from various faucets and it was simple to buy some 'Steem'. I think that has increased my reputation there. They want people to hold currency. You get $7 worth when you join, but you can't take it straight out. I haven't invested much yet and am happy to wait a while to see where it goes. The Steem price has fluctuated a lot as you would expect. I understand that some people have already taken out large amounts, but you would  have to do it via a Bitcoin exchange to get cash.

If you join up then you can find me here. I'm using my standard name of steevc. Posts do appear on Google and I've already had one about prog rock shared on Facebook. Note that I do not earn anything if you join. There is no referral scheme that I know of.

Update in 2021: The Steemit platform became corrupted by a hostile takeover, so links have been updated to point to the Hive platform that is still decentralised. You can find me there.

End of the experiment

If you've been reading this blog then you know that I have been an enthusiastic user of the Tsu social media service. I was initially attracted by their model of paying users based on views and for recruiting, but soon discovered an active community of people interested in making the most of what the internet can do. Since October 2014 I made well over $300 and withdrew $200. The rest went to charities using Tsu and on a few purchases, including an original painting. I know others made many thousands by recruiting lots of people and/or building a large following.

I was using it earlier today, but when I got home from work the app was not working and the homepage showed the message below.

It looks like they ran out of investor funding. They had a fairly large team operating from offices in New York. That couldn't be cheap. The HypeStat site reckoned they were making a few hundred dollars per day and if they were really only taking their 10% share that was not going to go far. They struggled to build an active userbase. Just over 5 million signed up, but I estimate that only about 1% were really using it and a lot of those were really just spamming the site to try and earn something.

I'm a little sad about this as I had invested a lot of time in helping to build something. I made a lot of friends. I will be able to stay in touch with some of them as we hooked up on other services.

I have to think about what I will do now. I enjoy blogging and may do that more on this blog and elsewhere. I am still a fan of Google+ and you can find me here. I don't really use my Twitter account and Facebook is mainly reserved for close friends and family. You can generally find me on other sites as steevc,

I have looked at some other social sites that pay, but none has come close to paying what Tsu has. Anything less is not really worth my time when I have other things I want to do. So I may step back for a while and enjoy life.

Update (2021): Google+ is dead too now. Find me on Hive

Pay day

Seven months ago I posted about my first payment of $100 from Tsu. This week I'm happy to report that I've been paid again! With the current weak pound it's worth a little more than last time. Those in the USA get a cheque in a black envelope and some cool stickers, but it has to be via Paypal for us in the UK.

I've actually earned a lot more than $100 in that period, but I gave a lot to charity via various campaigns. One of those was a month of sponsoring the runs of member in my Fun Runners channel for Charity Water. That just reached 500 followers. I've also been supporting Papillon Foundation in South Africa and Edlington Community Organisation in the UK. It would be great to see more charities on there from around the world. It's so easy to donate on Tsu, even if it's just a few cents, and there are no transaction fees. It's money you would not have otherwise, so why not help others?

Tsu continues to gain users, but has struggled to keep them engaged. I keep an eye on their stats via a couple of sites. Their Alexa ranking has been falling since the start of this year, but has just started to rise again. There's a lot of growth in places like Pakistan where a local celebrity has been recruiting a lot of new people. The new users need to be guided to using Tsu in the ways it was intended. There are still a lot of people just posting images they found on-line. They will not get paid if they are breaching copyright.

My own network is slowly growing. I have people in there from all over the world. A few are active and I try to encourage them to keep going. If they can build their own following and network then they will see their earnings rise.

I've spent some of my earnings on music by some musicians I've been following. +Matt Stevens is not yet on Tsu, but I've known him for years. I discovered +Deni Gauthier and +Cherry White on Tsu. It's cool to engage with artists you enjoy.

I bought another one from guitarist +Elliott Randall (ex-Steely Dan) who is also on Tsu.

Tsu is still fun for me, so I'll be sticking around there. I think it has massive potential for artists, musicians and charities. They can bring in their supporters to build the service. At around five million users they are small compared to the likes of Facebook and Twitter, but if they keep growing they could become a major financial force. Many of us are producing cool content that earns those sites revenue from advertising. I think we deserve to get a share.

Tsu > Google+ ?

I've been on Google+ pretty much since it started about 4 years ago. I think it's a great platform and I don't find it to be a ghost town as some people suggest it is. I think it depends on the sort of people you hope to find here. There are enough geeky and musical people to keep me happy. I think it has the best user interface of the social sites I've used. I'm on Facebook too, but that's to stay in touch with people who will not use anything else. I don't get much news from there.

I also joined Tsu when it started 18 months ago. That is also struggling to be a mainstream social site, but then it was aimed at creative people who wanted to own their content and profit from it. It also suffers from negative propaganda about it being some kind of scam. There are people there trying to get something for nothing, but I just ignore them. I'm no celebrity, but I've managed to gain 3x the followers I have on G+ in a shorter time. I post several times a day with my thoughts and links to cool stuff. That is making me around a dollar per day.

A lot of my Tsu earnings go to charities, but I've had one payout of $100 so far and should have a couple more this year. Some people are making that much in a week, which is a nice little income. It requires effort and quality content to achieve that. Those who know how to build an active social following will do very well on Tsu. If they are earning something from their Youtube channel then they can double-up by linking the videos on Tsu.

It's not just about the money as it's barely buying me a beer per week. I wouldn't stick around if there were not so many cool people. The money is a bonus and I enjoy the feedback I get from happy charities.

The Children and Network numbers are for people who have joined via my Tsu link. I get paid a portion of what they make for the site. If you are thinking of joining then please consider using my link.

Clicking for charity

From the outset the Tsu social network has made charity a feature. Charity organisations can register their credentials and will then have a 'Make a Donation' button on their profile. Any user can click that to donate some of whatever funds they have accumulated through using the site. You get paid based on views and by recruiting, so it's no extra effort really.

There are currently 67 charities listed (link on this post). These cover a wide range of causes. I'd like to see some from the UK, so if you know of any then please tell them. I know that some have raised many thousands of dollars so far.

I've probably given away about half of what I have made so far on Tsu. There are lots of campaigns run by users to boost donations. I did one in February where I sponsored people in my running group. Other people matched my donations. And this is all with money that we would not have otherwise.

Tsu has undergone a big change in recent months. They released a major re-design of the site and changed how some aspects work.Previously you could post on your own profile or to a group. Now there are global 'topics' where posts must go so that people can find what suits their interests. 'Channels' can be created within these topics by users for more specific areas. People are still adjusting to this, but I think it has some real benefits.

If you haven't visited in a while then check it out. They have an extensive FAQ that should answer most questions. If you are not a member then please use this link. I get a small bonus from recruiting people and you can do the same. They really want to attract more people who create original content. Artists, musicians and others can benefit directly from their work and they don't need to pay to make it visible there.

Wow, an app

If you've been reading this blog then you will know that I like Tsu. It's a good social site that has a good mix of people. Of course it also pays you and I've made over $100 there that I was able to redeem recently. There have been a few other sites with similar models that I have tried over the last year, but none of them was as fun to use and so I didn't use them enough to earn a significant amount.

Now there'a chat app which also pays users from advertising revenue. It's called WowApp and it seems to offer a similar set of features to Skype. Like Tsu it offers the option to transfer money to charities. You see ads in the app (Window, Apple, iOS and Android, no Linux) and web site, but they are not terribly obtrusive.

I'm trying it for now with a few people and have made about a cent. I've only recruited one person whereas others have hundreds and they are making a lot more.

I'll still have to use Skype, Facebook, Google and WhatsApp to stay in touch with friends, but this is another option.

If you want to try it then please use my referral link at https://www.wowapp.com/w/steevc/Steve-Clark

Tsu really does pay you

One of the issues Tsu has had is that people think it's some kind of scam or pyramid scheme and that they will never get paid. Well, I can happily report than even a bumbling amateur like me can get paid. This week I received a PayPal transfer of $100 (minus some fees), two days after I claimed it. I've never had to pay anything in. I've just given time I would have spent on-line anyway.

It's taken over a year to get to this point, but in that time I have given many dollars to charities and bought a painting using my Tsu earnings. If I hadn't done those I could have claimed some months ago, but I don't really mind. I never expected to make more than beer money from Tsu.

There are some people who have made thousands, but they either worked on it a lot more or are very well connected and so could build a network of top people who would make them some good money. I have limited social connections. I have amassed a lot of Tsu 'children', but they are mostly amateurs like me and many gave up when they didn't see the cash roll in.

I do have some cool children now who I expect could do well on Tsu if they stick with it. These include:

• GVader who makes fun videos about gaming
• Jared from How To Play In A Band, a site with useful resources for musicians
• Diary of a Blind Lady is a blog by a friend who documents how she is losing her site, but still manages to laugh
• Brian is also a friend and he's embarking on a new music career. He's into the UK festival scene
• Alexandra is a young lady in the USA who I suspect wants to get into modelling

If you are considering joining Tsu then please do it via one of these people as it will give them a welcome boost. I'm already doing relatively well there.

As always, I welcome any questions.

Getting the word out about Tsu

As previously blogged Facebook have been blocking any links to Tsu. This has made it hard for people to invite their friends over as a lot of them do not use many services outside Zuckerberg's empire.

Luckily several people have provided ways to work around this. One of the longest standing is Tsumatic. Not only do you get a personal page, but you will appear on the site's front page as long as you visit each day to 'boost' yourself.

Jon Dunn runs the TsuCoach site and now has a landing page you can use. Just change this URL to include your Tsu user name instead of mine: http://tsucoach.com/invite.php?user=steevc

Dexter Roona has a similar service on Tsu Made Easy: http://tsumadeeasy.infobunny.com/tsu-private-invite/?id=steevc

Tom Peace has run the Tsu forum almost since Tsu started and it's a cool place to discuss the service. He has always allowed Tsu profile links in signatures there and they probably helps as people looking for information about Tsu will find their way there. He now provides an extra service. If you create a post in this section inviting people to Tsu then buttons in the site will lead people to your page. These are assigned randomly to one of the people with an invitation page.

If you know of any others please let me know and I'll update this page.

Tsu's afraid...

The Tsu social network has now been running for over a year. It's still relatively new, but has managed to sign up over four million people all around the world. It's been interesting to see where it's been successful. Initially the USA had the most active members. Morocco got big when an account was opened for their king and lots of his subjects joined. India has also done well as you might expect with its massive population. Recently Pakistan saw a boom when a media star there joined and spread the word. Pakistan is currently top of the chart for visitors and views, but Brazil is rising fast.

Of course the big mover in social networks is Facebook and they seem to feel threatened by little Tsu to the extent of not allowing any links to Tsu and they also removed all existing Facebook posts that came via Tsu. Tsu lets you cross-post to your other social networks. This means that all my holiday pictures were removed from Facebook. It is also hampering people inviting their Facebook friends to join Tsu.

If you try to put a Tsu link into a Facebook post you are told that it is 'unsafe'. There's is an option to tell them otherwise, but I'm not sure anyone has had a proper response to that. You also cannot put a link in a Facebook instant message.

Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak stated today that Tsu is actually spamming Facebook less than some other sites with access to the API and that Facebook should restore the deleted content.

This action has not gone unnoticed and there have been several articles on high profile sites about it. ZDNet reported this first (I think). It's also been on Huffington Post, Octafinance, DeMorgen (in Flemish) and, most recently, on CNN.

The publicity may be helping Tsu a little as it can lead to people wanting to join. In some cases the journalists provide their own profile link and thus gain in their own network.

There is a hint of hypocrisy here as Tsu previously blocked links to a site with a (very) similar business model. I think that other site went too far in copying some of the Tsu ideas and there may have been legal action, but I don't know exactly what happened.

I'm sticking with Tsu for now. I've been steadily earning a little each day and should be able to claim my $100 payout before the end of the year at the current rate, and I enjoy the banter I get there. There's massive potential for growth and for people to do very well via the referral incentive.

I still think it's the idea place for creative people who want to be rewarded for their work. They will earn from views, but there are also people 'tipping' good content via Tsu money transfers. As well as liking a post you can give real money. I don't see many other sites that can offer anything like that.

See you on Tsu

Bitcoin for fun and (a little) profit

Everyone knows about Bitcoin, but how many actually have any? There are many ways to buy it now, but you need to have some specific need to justify the cost. What if you just want some to play with?

The answer is faucets. These are sites that will give you a small amount of Bitcoin in exchange for being exposed to some advertising and usually you need to respond to some CAPTCHA (to prevent automated access). It really will only be a small amount, generally less than a cent's worth, but if you do this a few times each day it can build up.

Here's my suggestion of one way to approach this:

1. Get a Xapo wallet. This a place to store your bitcoins. It will be on their servers and secured with your password. There's an app (Android at least), and you can even get a debit card
2. Open a Bleutrade account. This is also a wallet, but also allows you to trade in many other cryptocurrencies
3. Go to Moonbit and log in with your Xapo email address. You can visit as often as every five minutes to claim whatever amount has accumulated. There are bonuses for visiting daily, recruiting people, and some random bonus for no apparent reason. You can play with this, but we will exploit it below
4. Use the Moonbit referral link to log in again with your Bleutrade Bitcoin address. You should be able to find that on the Wallet page if you click the + on the Bitcoin line and then Deposit. When you claim on the faucet with this account your Xapo account will get 25% of the amount too. This will build up over time.
5. Once you have accumulated a reasonable amount of Bitcoin on Bleutrade use it to buy some of their Bleutrade Share. When you have enough of this you get a share of their trading profit twice a day. You probably need at least one share to get anything, but it will then give you a small amount each day. It's not much, but what do you expect for so little work?
6. Of course you can use your referral links (as I am here) to recruit more people and earn from their efforts. 
7. You can transfer your Xapo funds into Bleutrade to use there, but there is generally a fixed fee for this, so wait until you have a reasonable amount, e.g. $1 worth

I have tried some other wallets, including a local one on my PC so I could experiment with transferring between them. I have yet to actually buy anything with Bitcoin, but I have donated some to some projects. I've accumulated a few dollars worth. The price is not fluctuating much these days, but it would have to go up a lot to make me rich.

There any many other faucets, but I find Moonbit to give a reasonable return without being too annoying. Others want you to play games or watch videos. That's fine if you have the time. Bleutrade have their own faucets, but I don't make much from those. Bitcoin Zebra is related to Moonbit and gives a random amount each hour when you visit. Another simple faucet is freebitco.in.

I have looked at the Bitlanders social site that rewards you with Bitcoin, but it could take years to make a few dollars and I don't find it that interesting otherwise. I've also tried an Android app that pays random amounts each hour if you look at some ads, but the rewards are too small to be worth it to me. 

As with most things you are not going to make a lot for doing so little, but everything you make has some real worth and if you have the time you could make something worth having. I suspect some people play lots of faucets each day. The choice is yours.

I prefer to spend time socialising on Tsu where I make a nice little income, but I'll keep building my Bitcoin pot for future use.

Let me know your thoughts. I find cryptocurrencies fascinating and I think we will all be using them in some form in the future.

Group Therapy

The Tsu social network is about 10 months old now. That's a fairly long time in internet years and it should be reaching maturity now. The expectations for what a service should offer are set by the big guns like Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Although each site should have some unique features to mark it out people expect certain features.

The latest new feature on Tsu is groups. Although you can follow people who share your interests it is useful to have a place for like-minded folk to discuss their interests without all having to follow each other.

There are a limited selection of groups available so far as they have to be approved by the team. This is partly because groups generate earnings as in other areas of the site and this could be abused. It should also prevent lots of similar groups being created. The creator and administrators of the group get a percentage, but some also goes to a nominated charity. In the current beta phase (first 30 days) nobody gets anything.

I have joined some groups, but quickly left some as they were just full of irrelevant posts that were filling up my stream and the admins were not dealing with them quickly enough. I think there have been changes since then so that you only see posts by friends unless you actually go to the group page.

More groups are being approved each week and I will look into those. I've created a couple of possible groups to see how that goes and have also been asked to be an admin on others.

In my opinion groups work best when they are for a fairly specific topic. Otherwise there will be an overwhelming number of posts and it will be impossible to find the good stuff unless there are good filtering tools. Perhaps posts with the most likes and comments should be highlighted. There also needs to be search within a group. I hope to see the feature evolve.

Any thoughts? Discuss here or on Tsu.

Something from nothing

In October 2014 a friend told me about a new social site that paid users a share of their advertising revenue (90% in fact). I was a bit sceptical at first. There are loads of 'get rich quick' schemes on-line. Often these are some variant of a pyramid scheme where early adopters may get paid by new people paying to sign up. Those have no sustainable business model. The site was Tsu and as there was no sign of any cost to join up I gave it a go.

Things went fairly slowly to start with. I acquired a few followers, but it took a few weeks to even earn a few cents. I could see people frantically adding friends and followers (you can have 5000 and 1000 of each respectively). That did not appeal to me as it would make it impossible to monitor the feed of posts. I don't have the time to go looking at lots of separate feeds for cool stuff. I use social sites to see what friends are up to and to see cool/interesting/funny posts.

You have to make $100 before you can ask to be paid (originally via cheque, Paypal and other means were added later). It looked like that would take years to achieve, but I gradually built a larger following and started earning a little more. I also built a network of people (Tsu 'children') who used my profile link to join the site. I get a percentage of what they make and a smaller slice from their children, grandchildren etc make. That's not making me much at the moment, but it should in the long term.

I'm a long way from $100, but this week I just took delivery of a physical item bought with Tsu currency. British artist adogaday sent me one of her pictures that I took a fancy to. She's doing well by selling her work on Tsu. Anyone in the world can easily send her the money and she can get paid when she builds up enough.

My picture was partly paid for by a blog post I wrote on Tsuniverse. That may be my first time being paid to write.

I'd have had enough for a picture much earlier if I hadn't given so much to charity, but that's another great aspect of Tsu. There are all sorts of events and challenges to encourage giving and I find myself getting involved. One of these is #fivecentfriday. I try to give a little to a selection of charities each week. Some of those with more income have been matching these donations to boost the totals. It all adds up.


I expect I will get to $100 one day. It will take months, but then that money will go into a fund towards buying myself a treat.

Come and join us on Tsu to be part of the new economy.

Tsu is not a scam or a pyramid scheme

Recently Jon Dunn on Tsu pointed out that some Google searches implied that Tsu was a bit dodgy.

I think the other results relate to Texas Southern University.

The definition of a pyramid scheme is that you use money paid in by some people to pay others, so that it will eventually collapse when people realise they will never get paid. It's a scam rather than a business.

I think this idea is due to a misunderstanding of how the Tsu algorithm works. It's true that people get paid based on what those they recruit make, but none of them needs to pay in any money. All the revenue comes from the advertising on the site and in the app (available on Android and iOS). The company is taking 10% to cover their costs, but still has some way to go before they are profitable.

The fact is that people are getting paid just about every day. Some of them post pictures of the cheques they have received to encourage others. The biggest I've seen is this one by songwriter Andrew Fromm.

He's by no means a typical user as his contacts in the music industry means he could recruit people who can easily grow a large network. He has 29,000 followers himself, so he can earn many dollars a week from his own views regardless. I know of many other people who have had hundreds of dollars from Tsu over the eight months since it started.

Personally I've made about $40 and I've given about half of that to charities on the service. There are about forty of those now and they seem to be doing well. The recent Tsu Madness event raised over $1000 that went to a wildlife charity. There are various events such as #FiveCentFriday that encourage regular giving. You can give as little as one cent, so just about anyone can donate.

It's still going to take me a while to get to $100 (threshold for a payout), but before then I may use some of my funds to buy some art from an artist on there. I've said before that the Tsu market has great potential and it seems to be taking off. It just needs a few more features to make life easier for those selling goods and services. The site is still evolving as they find their way.

The fly in the ointment is the fact that Tsu is not growing so fast of late. They have reached around four million users, but public statistics seem to indicate that fewer than 1 in 40 is visiting daily. I know a lot of my child accounts are dormant. Somehow they need to keep people engaged and actively recruiting. I think that some of the newcomers do not understand that they stand to benefit from getting their friends to join up and use the site. There is still massive growth potential, so it will be a long time before new users stand no chance of building a network. I've written about that too.

I'll keep using Tsu because it's fun. There are nice, friendly people there and we have a laugh. If I make a little extra money, then that's a bonus. As always, you can find me at http://www.tsu.co/steevc

Tsuper Powers

Being part of the Tsu Madness tournament has been a very positive experience for me. I had lots of support from people I don't know that got me through the first round, but in the second round I was up against BigFollowing who could muster more votes than me. I still did pretty well considering I'm just a regular user. This campaign has already raised twice as much as last time with over a week to go. The eventual winner gets to decide which charity gets all the money. Of course people are free to donate to any of the charities instead or as well. The scale of the charity donations on Tsu has greatly impressed me. People can choose to publicly display their donations and some are for many dollars.

I have benefited in the tournament by gaining a fair few new followers. I hope some of them will stick with me and engage in some discussion as that's what I'm there for. I also benefited financially as my views were way up and my daily 'monetization' has increased. I've passed on some of that extra money to the Tsu Madness fund.

My Tsu earnings

In my early days at Tsu it looked like I was not going to reach the payout threshold for years, but I've steadily built my following and network over the last 8 months so that it looks like I could get paid this year even if I continue to make charity donations. I do intend to spend some of it buying a picture from an artist who accepts Tsu Dollars as payment. There are a number of companies and individuals doing this now and some are listed on the Tsu Market. As I have said before, there is massive potential for this sort of commerce.

In the long term a large Tsu network of people you have recruited, and their recruits, should give a steady income as the membership increases, I'm starting to see that even though many of the people on my network are inactive. It's obviously good to get in early on this for maximum benefit. I do not consider this a 'multi-level marketing' scam as some critics have accused, Nobody has to pay anything to use the site. All the income is from the advertisers, with the Tsu company taking 10% to keep things running.

People ask how I have managed to gain so many Tsu 'children'. I've gained a lot via the tsumatic site where anyone can advertise their profile link for free. Now that you can make your profile truly public on the web people can review your posts before deciding whether to join up. I hope this will result in less dormant accounts where people only signed up to see what was there.

As always I am open to any questions about my experience on Tsu. I don't claim to be a social media expert, but I will always try to help. Of course you can check out my profile too.

Vote for me! It's Madness!

When I joined Tsu it was full of talk of how to maximise your money making and some people were busy trying to game the system. A lot of those people have been banned or gave up and it's now settled down into a nice place to be. One of the most impressive aspects has been the charity work. There are around 40 charities on there that each have a Donate button on their profile. You can donate as little as one cent and it all goes to the charity. This really kicked in when the Nepal earthquakes happened and many hundreds of Dollars were donated. Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak set up TSU and Shikshya Foundation Nepal specifically for this cause, but other charities also helped there. I find it amazing that all this money is what people have earned from using Tsu. I've heard people call it a pyramid scheme, but nobody has to pay anything to join. Some people are making a lot of money and being very generous with their donation. Others make a little and give what they can. They may never get to the $100 pay-out level, but they can still do some good.

Of course people tend to want to make giving more fun, so various challenges have been organised to encourage donations. I've given to many of these. One of these is Tsu Madness, which was run in March. It's run like a sports tournament where popular Tsu members are played off against each by people voting for them other until two remain to fight for the title. The winner gets to nominate a charity to receive all the money raised from the tournament account and donations.

Tsu Madness is running again this month (June 2015) and I'm surprised to find myself entered as a wildcard. I'm by no means famous, but I've got to know a lot of people on Tsu by participating.

I'm up against people with far larger followings, so I don't expect to get too far, but I'll play along. My nominated cause is Charity Water. I think clean water is a basic right that we should have got to everyone by now, but much work still needs to be done.

I'll try to do a few posts to promote myself in the contest and to help it make some more money. I'll be donating some of the money I have too.

So please consider joining Tsu, even it's only to participate in this event. There are lots of cool people to follow and interact with, so maybe you will decide to stay.

Knocking down the walls

When Tim Berners-Lee developed the web he envisioned it as an open web of information that anyone could read (and modify originally). In the 25 years since then the web has changed a lot. Some sites are more like applications than just sources of information. One of the bad trends has been to lock sites behind some sort of barrier. This may be force people to pay for it or just to make them sign up to the site. There may be cases where privacy is required, but if I'm just sharing cool links or blogging then I want it to be accessible by anyone. That's one reason I use Blogger and other web sites I've run that have been open.

Although I liked many of the features of the Tsu social network I didn't like that it was a walled garden. If I sent anyone a link they would see this sign-up screen. That put me off sharing posts on other social networks. People thought I was trying to 'scam' them into joining some money-making scheme rather than being social.

Being able to share links across the various social sites is something I enjoy and any barriers to that were a pain.

As of today things have changed.









There's a new privacy option "Do not require users to sign-in to see my profile and posts". I've turned this on as I don't want my posts to be hidden. There's a further option to my profile from search engines, but I can't see any reason to do that.

It's going to be interesting to see if this affects the number of views I get. Tsu users have access to statistics on their most recent posts. You don't get details about where viewers came from, but it's interesting to see which posts work best. On Tsu views translate into income. When money is involved people will try to cheat the system and concerns were immediately raised about this. So it will be interesting to see if they count views from non-members.

Previously people have joined up just to see what the site is when someone sent them a link. Many of them never came back. Now they can have a look around first and decide if it's something they want to be part of.

I do see a few little issues with this. The profile that they originally visit only gets credited for new members if they join whilst on one of their posts (or the whole feed). If they click to another user (who has opened their feed) then the credit goes to that one. If they go to the 'home' page then they are back to the old method of having to manually enter a username. These may be teething problems that will get sorted out soon. The site is still relatively new and I don't know how much user testing has been done before making this feature available.

Tsu user Eileen Brown has written an article on ZDNet about the new open Tsu.

Here are a few of my recent selected posts for you to check out:

• From when I discovered the open Tsu
• Sharing a video about renewable energy on Orkney
• One of my photos from my neighbourhood

You are still limited in layout and number of images, so it's not an ideal blogging platform. I'll keep doing that here and post the links onto Tsu (and elsewhere).

I am making a little more money on Tsu lately, but it's not enough to justify my time. I stick around as I'm having fun interacting with cool people. It's interesting to play with a new site that is doing radical things. The money is just a bonus.

Collected thoughts

Earlier this week Google+ added a feature called Collections. This looks a lot like a feature I thought of some time ago that I called 'aspects'. I was thinking that there are some people I follow on social media who post on a variety of topics. In some cases these may be tagged, but it has not been easy to include or exclude specific topics. For example I follow some fellow Linux fans who are also into soccer, which is of no interest to me. I'd like to be able to exclude those posts from my feed as I have limited time to look through it all.

The Google+ feature allows you to select a Collection instead of circles for a post. When you create a Collection you can select whether your existing followers get it by default and they can opt out if they wish. You can also set whether it is public or for a circle (or just you). You cannot change that afterwards, so choose carefully. I created my Social networks Collection for my thoughts about G+, Tsu and other systems. I had a comment recently saying they thought I was 'spamming' their feed with money making schemes. That person could now opt out if they still want to see my other posts. The money making aspect of Tsu, 3tags and Bitlanders does interest me, but I don't expect to make much in the short term. I've given most of what I have made to charities that use those sites.

It would be good to see some automation of this feature by suggesting an appropriate Collection from keywords. Collections are already in the Android app.

I've seen a few opinion pieces saying that G+ is dead, but it seems pretty alive to me and this shows that they are still adding features. There are many millions of users and plenty of interest to me. It hasn't taken off like Facebook and Twitter, but I think it has the best set of features and a good user interface. They still don't have advertising, but I'm not sure they need the money as they will get it when people go to Gmail or Youtube anyway.

My current (dead tree) reading is Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. I've been interested in on-line collaboration for some years. It covers more than just traditional wikis. I've been an advocate of using a wiki at work for years, but some people just don't get it.

This book is a few years old and so it's interesting to see what has changed. Back in 2008 MySpace was the big player in social, having taken over from Friendster. Facebook was still in its early days and even Youtube was still fairly new.

Open for business

Businesses are starting to accept payment using funds accumulated on the Tsu social network. Users there get paid based on views, likes and shares. It will take most people some time (years?) to reach $100 when they can take the money out, but they can also use the money to send to other users or to donate to charities. There has recently been a surge of charity donations to aid the people of Nepal who have suffered a terrible earthquake. I estimate that thousands of dollars have been donated already. That shows how much money users have already. I've given away over half the money I've made on Tsu.

There are a couple of similar articles about Denver juice bar Bambucycles accepting Tsu payments. More will follow in areas where the network is big. You can only spend as much as you have earned as you cannot transfer money into Tsu from outside. The service is supposed to be taking 3% from each transfer, but I am unsure if they have started doing this yet. They are not profitable yet, but this could provide an appreciable part of their income in future. For now they still rely on venture funding that will have to be paid back.

I think Tsu needs to add features to make payments more convenient. They could add a barcode scanner to the app so that users can scan a code in a shop to make a payment. Some Bitcoin apps do this already. Users need to be very certain of how much they are transferring and to whom. There should be options of anonymous payments or to have the payers name listed against the transaction. At the moment you get a notification when you receive money that says who sent it, but you can't see this later in the Bank. People who are selling on-line need details of where to send their product.

With all this money floating around the service needs good security. Currently accounts are just protected by a password. I would hope people are using something non-trivial for that. Really they should be using two factor authentication as others do, so users need a code via SMS or other means to confirm they have a specified device. Even this is not perfect, but it reduces the risks. It is very difficult to achieve ideal security in ways an average user can cope with.

I've still only made a few dollars. I have a large network there that could potentially earn me much more, but most of those people are inactive. Keeping people engaged remains a problem. I had one recent 'child' who I estimate was making me several cents per day, but she was mostly posting what I would consider 'click bait'. She gained hundreds of friends in a few days, so people obviously go for that. She's stopped posting for now. If all of my network were that active I would be making several dollars per day. A lot of people still don't seem to understand the value of recruiting children and building a network. At this early stage there is huge potential for that.

Although Tsu is gaining new accounts they are not retaining all those users. Statistics show falling visitor numbers. Articles like those above may help to bring in more people, but they need to have realistic expectations about how much they can make.

I'll be sticking with Tsu for the meantime. I've made some cool friends there. There's Theo of the band E-Mute. I'm hoping to get to one of their gigs in a few weeks. There's also guitarist Elliott Randall who has played on many classic songs (e.g. Steely Dan's Reelin' in the Years). There are also lots of fellow social media enthusiasts.

The value of networking

A common feature of sites that pay users is that you get rewarded for recruiting people. This seems logical as they need to grow in order to make enough to pay the staff. Tsu and 3tags have the same model (spookily, rights-infringingly similar) where you get a portion of what your 'children' and their children make. The site keeps 10% in each case.

I've seen people on Tsu with networks of many thousands of people and this can make them several dollars per day. This only works if they are active. I have built a fairly large network myself, but only a small percentage are still active on the site and so I still only make pennies per day. This may change in time if more people join up or if those who joined before come back. There is definitely an issue with keeping people engaged. I suspect they give up when they don't make anything immediately. I think the two main issues are

1. Setting realistic expectations
2. I also think there is a language barrier. I've reached out to some of my children, but often they do not respond.

I wonder if some people join Tsu when they see a link just to see what it was as the main site is not visible to non-members. This seriously reduces how many will use it. I want my public content to be truly public, where Google etc can find it.

3tags is public and seems to benefit from that as people are making good money even though it has a lot less members than Tsu. I haven't managed to recruit many people and creating a post involves a little more work than Tsu, so I'm not doing much there. It's not really a social site. It's about sharing links and blog posts. I could blog there I suppose, but I prefer to be a little independent. Yes, I know Blogger is not under my control either. I do have my own site, but it's easier to blog here.

There's a new (ish) player at Bitlanders. Their USP is that they pay in Bitcoin. The site looks a little like Google+, but uses cartoon avatars. I think it's actually been around for about 6 months, but it's fairly quiet there. Some people have accumulated thousands of followers and may be making money, but there's not much discussion of that. A lot of the posts I see are about Judo. I think that's because some of the founders are into it. You get 'buzz' for viewing posts and videos. Each day that gets translated into some small amount of Bitcoin. If you recruit people you get a fixed 20% of what they make. I'll keep an eye on it, but I won't be visiting every day.

I've been neglecting things like blogging and pocasting lately. I need to drag myself away from the feeds and get back to that, as well as important things like playing my guitar.