Some Ello thoughts - September 2014

(my Sep 29, 2014 comment at ToledoTalk.com with minor corrections and/or additions added below)

If you know someone who already has an Ello account, then you can request an invite from that person. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until Ello gets around to handing out new invites.

They intentionally slowed down new sign-ups because of the crush of new people over the past week. You can still request an invite through its website, but it could take days or maybe weeks before you gain access.

These are the pages of the Ello founders/creators

Excerpts from their https://ello.co/manifesto

Your social network is owned by advertisers.
Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

I'm guessing that's based upon an old quote that goes something like this:

"If you aren't paying for something, then you're not the customer, you're the product being sold."

Ello in a couple different forms has existed for months, but the creators did not expect it to blow-up with interest like it has recently.

Ello is VC-backed by a whopping $435,000. The site is a bit raw from a feature and design standpoint, but it's only a few months old. Users have no patience anymore. Give the site more time, like a year or two.

Facebook launched in February 2004, but it did not open to everyone (age 13 and over) until September 2006. Medium.com opened in September 2012, but it remained in some kind of invite-only or private beta stage for more than a year, and it has very slowly rolled out features over the past two years, and that slowness to introduce new features was intentional.

Many people who joined Ello in the past few days want Ello to look and function like other social networks, which is probably the opposite of why Ello was created.

To stay ad-free, Ello will probably charge a fee to use the site, which is good because we pay for a lot of things. I see no problem with charging a fee for an unfiltered, ad-free stream of postings.

Over the past week many people in the tech media and among the A-list web writers/blogger have looked silly with their scathing remarks about Ello.

These same people will champion diversity with other aspects of our culture, but they are the first to rip anything that's new and different.

I've read multiple stories by these ankle-biters who have authoritatively stated that Ello will fail. So I guess there's no point in the Ello founders to continue. They should shutdown the website.

And what's the definition of a successful social network? For the hard core tech writers, they might define success as having at least 500 million users. But maybe Ello founders are okay if the site "only" has 50 million or 5 million users. Maybe the Ello founders are not interested in growing a company that contains thousands of employees. Maybe they are simply different.

For some bizarre reason, many tech stories have used the word "mysterious" to describe Ello. I guess these journalists just copy each others writing.

Many people also compare Ello to Diaspora, which makes no sense to me. Diaspora is an open source app that you install to create a decentralized network. Ello is a closed, silo that hosts your content.

The tech media claims that Ello is no Facebook killer. No kidding. Maybe I missed it, but I have not seen any of the Ello founders say that they intend Ello to be a Facebook killer. One Ello founder said Ello is anti-Facebook, but that's not the same as a Facebook killer.

The hard core tech geeks rip Ello for its bad design and lack of features. No mobile app. No API. No RSS feeds. No like button. No this and no that. Blah, blah, blah.

From the Ello feature list page: "Ello is in beta."

I like the look of Ello because it is different. I've been reading it fine on my iPhone for the past few days. The font is a bit smaller than I would like, but again, the site in only months old.

Maybe the Ello founders created Ello for normal people and not for geeks who want an API.

Nobody is forcing anyone to join Ello or to give up their other social networks.

Ello founder Budnitz said it well:

"If you don’t like what we’re doing, then please delete your account and leave."

Many people may find Ello more useful than Facebook, which should be okay to do. We have different tastes.

Sep 25, 2014 WaPo story

Ello, a social network where real names are not required. Its founder, Paul Budnitz, told Betabeat the Web site rolled out in July.
Ello caught on with the LGBT community after Facebook recently disabled the accounts of some drag artists who used their performance names on their profiles instead of their “real” names.

#ello - #socialnetworking - #media - #moronism - #blog_jr

By JR - 859 words
created: Sep 29, 2014 - updated: Sep 29, 2014
source - versions