Alex FerrerAlex Ferrer
Alex FerrerAlex Ferrer

We’ve all been working for free. It’s time to collect.

I had a really interesting conversation with a friend the other day about Facebook and Twitter, on both of which I am pretty active. Sure my level of involvement comes and goes depending on how busy I am, but I try to make time to post comments, pictures, jokes, legal commentary and anything else that I think might be of interest in some small way.  I don’t know that what I post has any value per se, but if people enjoy reading it or sharing it, who am I to say it doesn’t?Now right off the bat, let me say that although capitalism has been given a bad name over the last few years, I’m a fan of capitalism. I’m not talking about corporate greed “capitalism” like we saw with Wall Street during the toxic loan crisis.  I’m talking about good old-fashioned capitalism.  I’m talking about the idea that you can create something of value, something that other people want; and you can sell it and get paid for your efforts.  It built the greatest country in the world and gives the best opportunity for people to go from rags to riches and become successful, whatever they define success to be.  And the competition of a free market helps to make sure that the ideas get better and better because the best ideas and the most attractive deals are the ones that get the customers.  I think I just heard the “best idea” and the “most attractive deal” in that conversation I had with my friend.What Facebook and Twitter have done is capitalism at its best. I don’t begrudge them that at all.  They came up with a method that allowed people to share “content” (our thoughts, ideas, pictures, jokes, videos, — anything we post) with friends or strangers, and the concept took off.  They found a variety of ways to make money off of it by, among other things, getting paid by advertisers to put ads where the public will see them.  In fact, Facebook and Twitter have made billions of dollars (that’s billions with a “b”) off of all of our daily posts.
Don’t gloss over that. They are paid by advertisers to put ads on the pages where people go in order to view OUR content.  As my new friend Sebastian pointed out, WE create the product that people are coming to see; THEY get paid the billions.   Doesn’t seem fair, right?  I mean of course they should make money; after all, they created the sites on which we post.  But is it fair that we get nothing when it’s our posts that bring in the advertising dollars?Well, fairness is what it’s all about when it comes to Sebastian’s new social network site called “tsū” (a Japanese word meaning “an aesthetic ideal” or something like that, which ironically is pronounced “sue” — but that’s not why I like it).   The concept of tsū is that we are the ones who create the content so we should share in the profit.  After all, although I previously said I wasn’t sure if what I post has any value, it clearly has value since without the content all of us create, Facebook and Twitter would get paid exactly what they pay us for doing all that work … nothing.

So here’s how tsū works, in a nutshell: tsū is like Facebook and Twitter in that you have a profile and add friends and followers.  You post just like you would on the other sites and people can like and share your posts.  There is one major difference, however.  Social media advertisers pay Facebook and Twitter for the number of “eyeballs” their ads get (regardless of whether you remember actually seeing the ad, it was on your page when someone came to see what you posted and that counts).  The advertiser pays them more for each view on the ad and for each click-through visit to the company’s webpage.  Facebook and Twitter keep ALL of that money and don’t even say “thanks for making it all possible.”

Tsū, on the other hand, shares its revenues with you. Not a tiny piece, either.  The platform takes only 10% of all economics created and then from the remainder you get 50% of the advertising revenue from your posts!  But it’s even better than that, tsū will also give an additional 33% of the remaining 90% to the person who invited you to join.  You will likewise get an additional 11% of the remainder of the advertising revenue for anyone invited by your direct network.  So if you bring 1,000 friends to the platform, you will receive 33% of all the advertising money generated by their posts after the platform’s nominal fee, as well as 50% of the remaining value of what’s generated by yours…forever.  I know that unless, you’re an accountant, the numbers sound a little confusing but the bottom line is that you get paid for what you already do for free.  Brilliant, isn’t it?  And tsū isn’t selling you anything.  It’s using a very cleaver format to share its advertising profits with the people who made it all possible.  Us.

Tsū is already taking off so get on soon. They are doing a blast tonight and tomorrow and have already brought on tons of celebrities who you can follow, just like on the other sites.  With all the discontent over Facebook’s changes, problems and privacy issues, I think tsū is going to be huge so I have grabbed the username “Judge.”  Since it’s early on, great usernames like “Judge” are still available but they’re being snapped up rapidly as people join and especially after they tonight’s blast.  So if you don’t want your username to be something like “prettygirl17439987,” join soon.

If you want to get your own username and start inviting your friends to join, use my invite code (“tsu.co/Judge”) and follow the easy steps. Only users can invite others and that’s what makes the math work. You will be part of my network and can start inviting people to yours right away after you create your own code.

To be totally transparent, after the platform fee, I will get 33% of any remaining 90% of ad monies your post generates because I am inviting you. And you will get 33% of the remaining advertising dollars from anything generated by people you invite as well, along with 50% of post-platform fee revenues that your own posts generate.  The sooner you join, the sooner you can start adding people and getting paid for doing nothing more than what you already do.  After all, it’s your work.  Not Facebook’s.  Not Twitter’s.

Posted in:Alex's Blog

2,004 replies on “We’ve all been working for free. It’s time to collect.”