What is "tsu"

つ, in hiragana, or ツ in katakana, is one of the Japanese kana, each of which represents one mora. Both are phonemically although for phonological reasons, the actual pronunciation is .

The sokuon, which are used mainly to indicate consonant gemination, are identical but somewhat smaller.

The dakuten forms づ, ヅ, pronounced the same as the dakuten forms of the su kana in most dialects (see yotsugana), are uncommon. They are primarily used for indicating a voiced consonant in the middle of a compound word (see rendaku), and they can never begin a word.

In the Ainu language, it can be written with a handakuten (which can be entered into a computer as either one character (ツ゚) or two combined characters (ツ゜)) to represent the sound , which is interchangeable with the katakana ト゚.

The katakana form has become popular as an emoticon in the Western world due to its resemblance to a smiling face. The small kana っ/ッ is also commonly used at the end of lines of dialogue in fictional works as a symbol for a glottal stop.

Forms

Rōmaji

Hiragana

Katakana

Normal ts-
(た行 ta-gyō)

tsu

つ

ツ

tsuu
tsū

つう, つぅ
つー

ツウ, ツゥ
ツー

Addition dakuten d/z-
(だ行 da-gyō)

du, zu,
dzu

づ

ヅ

duu, zuu
dū, zū

づう, づぅ
づー

ヅウ, ヅゥ
ヅー

Other additional forms

Romaji

Hiragana

Katakana

Tsa

つぁ

ツァ

Tsi

つぃ

ツィ

Tsu

つ

ツ

Tse

つぇ

ツェ

Tso

つぉ

ツォ

Tsyu

つゅ

ツュ

• ヅァ, ヅェ and ヅォ are used in gairaigos, these pronunciation are not same as ズァ(zwa), ズェ(zwe) and ズォ(zwo).

Tsū was an online social networking service and payment platform founded in October 2013. Tsū was created by Evacuation Complete, LLC, a Texas corporation, which was founded on February 7, 2008. Founders of Evacuation Complete are Sebastian Sobczak, Drew Ginsburg, and Thibault Boullenger, and the site is headquartered in New York City. Tsū was open to new users via invitation only. The site went "dark" in August 2016.

Like Facebook, after registering to use the site, users were able to create a personal profile, add other users as friends, exchange messages, post status updates and photos, and receive notifications when others updated their profiles. Tsu differentiated itself from competitors by allowing its users to maintain ownership of the content they post.

The inspiration for Tsū came from the story of Ed O'Bannon, the lead plaintiff in O'Bannon v. NCAA, an antitrust class action lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association regarding the association's use of the images of former student athletes for commercial purposes.

Tsū has been compared extensively to Ello, a contemporary social network that rejects selling advertisements at all; Tsu's approach was to instead embrace the fact that social media content has value and, via a YouTube-like rev-share, distribute ad revenue through a tiered payment structure among users based upon their viewership. Members "earned" a few cents for certain activity. The tiered membership structure enabled members to build up pyramids of members beneath them from whom they received a small share of their commission. Thus early members, who were able to invite new members and build pyramids of users beneath them, were often used as examples of Tsu success stories in the media. Payment to members was received once they had reached the earnings threshold equivalent of US$100 in their Tsu accounts.

In September 2015, Facebook blocked links to the site from its platforms, along with references to the tsu.co domain name, saying that Facebook users had been reporting it as spam. Tsū speculated that this move may have been motivated by fear of competition. In December 2015, Facebook lifted the prohibition.