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Caille Millne, San Francisco Chronicle

By Caille Millner

Published 11:11 am, Friday, October 24, 2014

Everyone is so tired of Facebook.

Everyone has always been so tired of Facebook. In the years since Facebook grew from being a digital college yearbook to a global octopus of connectivity, the only thing as reliable as the service's ubiquity was the avalanche of stories about how the service was on its way out.

I admit to occasionally being one of those doomsayers, but I've been impressed by Facebook's staying power. Whatever the reasons — Mark Zuckerberg's managerial prowess, the comfort of that easy blue interface, or simply the fatigue we all share at the thought of migrating to yet another new service — Facebook seems to be here to stay. Unless, of course, one of the many new challengers that have recently shown up can topple it.

For the past several weeks, I've been spending time on a couple of the new services that are rattling Facebook's cage.

First there's Ello, which made a big splash on its official premiere about a month ago and has been putting out fires ever since. Invite-only, it's a social network that promises no ads and no manipulation of user data. All of this is spelled out in Ello's "manifesto." (A manifesto is always a sign that users should approach a site with not just a grain of salt but a clove of garlic and a wooden stake.)

They've clearly tapped into Facebook frustration — Ello has just raised $5.5 million in venture capital funding. One million people are using the network, and an additional 3 million people are on the waiting list.

But.

As an early adopter, I immediately noticed some very basic problems with Ello. Let's start with the most obvious one: The search feature doesn't work.

When you log on to Ello for the first time (and the second time, and the third time, and the fourth time, if you haven't given up by then), it directs you to follow a list of graphic designer dudes whom you don't know and wouldn't necessarily want to sit next to at the artisan coffee shop.

It's impossible to find your friends, unless you manually add each one from their own pages. In order to get to their pages, you have to know their handles — are you starting to see the problem here?

There's no point in joining a social network just to follow strangers. Many of my friends have already quit.

Maybe the founders of Ello are too busy pounding drums in time to their own manifesto to care about such basic matters. Social networks are first and foremost a matter of trust, and if I can't trust the founders to let me use their network in order to be social, then I can't trust them with my personal data, either.

I also spent some time this week playing around on Tsu, which launched Oct. 14. Tsu displays ads, but it also pays back users for the content they post to the site. The more popular your content is, the more money you make, so it helps to already be a YouTube celebrity or at least a C-list Hollywood star.

If you haven't heard about Tsu yet, its $7 million worth of venture capital funding means that you'll hear about it soon. I'm not sure, though, whether you'll want to join.

"We're using a model based on royalties, and it's designed the same way that YouTube's monetization strategy was designed," said Tsu co-founder Sebastian Sobczak.

Sobczak was once a venture capitalist in San Francisco, and it shows. Early users of Tsu need to be pretty fluent in economics just to know what's going on. The site's FAQs are rife with mentions of embedded payment platforms and network adoption; the average person considering whether Tsu is the best place to brag about her engagement isn't likely to feel at home.

I asked Sobczak about that, and he insisted that it didn't matter: "Content doesn't have to be a song or a video that you make; it can be a selfie," he said. "And even if you're a less social user, say you make enough over the course of the year to buy a latte. Isn't that worth it?"

Maybe? I like the way Tsu works — it's easy to find people and easy to use. I like that users get a large percentage of the cash earned from their own content (Tsu takes 10 percent off the top).

But I fear that the complicated structure of the network's monetization model — and the fact that in some ways, it resembles a pyramid scheme, with greater rewards accruing to those who monetize first — will spook potential users.

People go to social networks so they can look at GIFs. Complexity is death.

I proved my own point this week. Challenged by the headaches of trying to find my friends on Ello and figure out how, exactly, I might be taken for a ride on Tsu, I closed both of the sites and logged on to Facebook. I clicked "like" on a couple of posts. I sniggered at a few pet photos. I posted a request and got an answer.

Caille, 0. Facebook, 1.

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner