NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--tsū (pronounced ‘sue’), the social network that gives its users ownership of their content by providing royalties for its commercial use, announced it has grown to more than one million users within four weeks of launching on October 21, 2014. This makes tsū the fastest growing independent social network to reach that mark. Subsequently, tsū has launched a payment and donation feature in order to power its first crowd-funded charitable campaign for charity: water, a non-profit organization bringing clean drinking water to people in developing countries. This effort has raised $18,000, which will fund the construction of three hand-dug wells in Ethiopia.
Driven by the philosophy that all users are content creators who should be given royalties for the use of their content, tsū’s embedded payment platform and peer-to-peer feature creates an economic system based on the digital value of each of its community members. The feature has enabled the site to act as a social network and a platform to transact, organize and drive crowd-funded initiatives.
“tsū users have allowed the monetary value of their music, street art, blog posts and baby photos to directly impact lives in other continents,” said Sebastian Sobczak, founder and CEO of tsū. “Think of how powerful that is: social users can now fund a cause without ever using their credit card, debit card or giving out their banking information. I’m humbled by the collective efforts of our community and supporters, and honored to present charity: water with $18,000 within this short timeframe. We’re looking forward to continuing this collaborative momentum of being a user-driven social network that shares everything and allows users to give back in a novel way.”
tsū aims to be one of the most progressive and socially responsible social networks, as dozens of charities and nonprofits active on the network are continually receiving funds from the content they produce, the social networks they connect to tsū and donations made by the tsū community. Charitable organizations on tsū include BeautifulGoal.Org, The Goss-Michael Foundation, Environmental Media Association, Feed The Children, Food for the Hungry, the Andy Roddick Foundation, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and No More Tears. In observance of World AIDS Day on December 1, tsū launched a one-day campaign for DIFFADallas, one of the largest non-profit organizations working to fight HIV and AIDS.
“From the very beginning, charity: water’s work has been powered by donations from passionate individuals, and the generous community at tsū has demonstrated that once again,” said Scott Harrison, founder of charity: water. “Thanks to their support, three communities in Ethiopia will gain access to clean and safe drinking water. Since 2008, over 500,000 generous supporters have come together to fund more than 13,000 charity: water projects in 24 nations that will serve more than four million people with life’s most basic need: clean drinking water.”
In the course of the charity: water initiative, generous executives from a major financial institution matched the amount raised on tsū, bringing the total to $12,000 in donations. The executives’ donated funds have been submitted to their institution’s matching program, leading to an additional $6,000 donation to charity: water’s well-building program, bringing the total funds donated for water wells to $18,000.
tsū is free and to use the platform one must be invited or find another users’ short code and register there. For more information on tsū, visit www.tsu.co.
About tsū
tsū (www.tsu.co) is the first social network with an embedded payment platform that gives its community ownership of their content and audience. tsū’s architecture gives any digital content creator a royalty-based annuity. Built on technology developed over the past six years, tsū has raised over $7M in funding from Sancus Capital Privé and various strategic partners across media, entertainment and sports to develop a social platform powered by a proprietary algorithm that fairly allocates tsū’s revenues back to user accounts. tsū was founded by Sebastian Sobczak, Drew Ginsburg, Thibault Boullenger and Jonathan Lewin.
For more information visit: www.tsu.co.
About charity: water
charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. In eight years, charity: water has funded 13,000 water projects that will bring clean, safe drinking water to 4.6 million people in 24 countries. 100% of all public donations go directly to the field and we prove every project with GPS coordinates on Google Maps.
