Is it the Facebook-killer? Ello, the so-new-it\u2019s-glistening, so-hip-it-hurts upstart social network has set out to be the artsy, LGBTQ-friendly, anti-advertising and anti-big-data alternative to social media giants like Facebook and Twitter. After an explosion of popularity this week, its small team is scrambling to deal with unprecedented growth, with as many as 35,000 people requesting membership invites every hour. But can it cope? Here\u2019s what you need to know.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the anti-Facebook<\/strong><\/p>\n Its manifesto starts with a clear shot across Zuckerburg\u2019s bows: \u201cYour social network is owned by advertisers,\u201d it says. \u201cEvery 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\u2019s bought and sold. We believe there is a better way.\u201d<\/p>\n It ends: \u201cYou are not a product.\u201d Ello\u2019s founders have pledged that the site will never sell user data to advertisers, or introduce a paywall. There have been a number of trend-pieces already calling Ello a Facebook-killer, but it bears remembering that in terms of sheer size Ello is currently not even a speck on Facebook\u2019s radar-screen. It would have to maintain its current explosive rate of growth in order threaten Facebook\u2019s 1.28 billion-strong user base. But the social web is fickle, and stranger things have happened.<\/p>\n They\u2019re as surprised by this week\u2019s growth as everyone else<\/strong><\/p>\n The Guardian caught up with one of Ello\u2019s founders, designer Todd Berger, who said that as recently as Monday, the team had no idea that things would \u201cblow up\u201d the way they have.<\/p>\n \u201cThe barrage of traffic we\u2019re getting right now is unexpected and unplanned-for,\u201d he said. \u201cI dont want to say it\u2019s throwing us off our game, but it is a little bit. It\u2019s a deluge. In terms of new sign-ups, the quantity of data we\u2019re processing is unbelievable.\u201d<\/p>\n He said that they didn\u2019t themselves know for sure what had caused it, but pointed to two factors; first, that they had been featured on a Y Combinator blog post on Monday, and second, that leaders from the LGBTQ community had apparently chosen them to host their exodus from Facebook over its real-name policy.<\/p>\n The atmosphere was \u201cpretty exciting. It\u2019s pretty fun,\u201d Berger said, but added: \u201cIt was more fun yesterday when most of the press was positive. There\u2019s all sorts of crazy wild stories happening, some emails faked, some screenshots photoshopped, and people are speculating about our investors. It\u2019s cool, everyone has thick skin.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s private<\/strong><\/p>\n Access to Ello is by invitation-only, and after the recent spike in popularity \u2013 user applications for invites have fluctuated between 20,000 and 35,000 an hour (\u201cwarp speed\u201d, as Budnitz described it) \u2013 and the site has slowed down their acceptance of new users in order to deal with the scale of its new base.<\/p>\n Immediately afterwards, invites began trading on eBay for as much as $100. Ello uses Google Analytics to collect user data, though they say \u201cbefore information about you is stored on the Google servers, your IP address is stripped and anonymized.\u201d \u201cTo the best of our knowledge\u201d, the site says, \u201cthis also makes what you do on Ello useless to Google for advertising purposes.\u201d Google did not respond to request by the Guardian for comment on this. Ello\u2019s team also say they aim to make it easy for users to opt-out of all data collection and sharing if they choose.<\/p>\n But:<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s going to cost money for features. Some have been expressing doubts this week about Ello\u2019s business model. Andy Baio, a web developer who helped to build Kickstarter, uncovered the nearly $500k Ello received from tech venture-capitalists FreshTracks Capital. \u201cVCs don\u2019t give money out of goodwill,\u201d he said in a post on Ello. \u201cUnless they have a very unique relationship with their investors, Ello will inevitably be pushed towards profitability. Tech journalist Quinn Norton has also expressed doubt. \u201cEllo needs to make money, and that means Ello eventually needs to charge someone.\u201d<\/p>\n In answer to this, Berger told the Guardian that the plan was to roll out a system where users pay to add features \u2013 including, he said, privacy features \u2013 at some point in the future. \u201cPrivacy comes at a cost,\u201d he said, \u201cand some of our enhanced privacy features will come with fees.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s LGBTQ-friendly<\/strong><\/p>\n In what the Daily Dot called the \u201cGreat Gay Facebook Exodus\u201d, users are apparently abandoning Facebook for Ello in protest about Facebook\u2019s controversial naming policy, under which drag queens were pressured to use their legal names instead of their stage names.<\/p>\n Berger told the Guardian that the move may have been \u201ca little naive for both parties\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got a couple of emails from people who claimed to be leaders of the LGBTQ community \u2026 we didn\u2019t understand the significance,\u201d he said. \u201cA lot of the safety features weren\u2019t in place.\u201d He said that in response to the move the team were expediting features like user-blocking, and that they \u201clove having this community on Ello\u201d.<\/p>\n It\u2019s erotica-friendly<\/strong><\/p>\n The site\u2019s original use policy stated \u201cNo Porn. We know it when they see it,\u201d but on Wednesday developer Justin Gitlin said on Twitter that was \u201cold wording\u201d, adding, \u201cwe honestly are open to NSFW content.\u201d<\/p>\n Later, the rules were updated to include a system which shields users who don\u2019t want to see porn from adult content by tagging it as NSFW.<\/p>\n It\u2019s pretty<\/strong><\/p>\n Ello was put together by a team of \u201cseven well-known artists and programmers\u201d, and the lead founder is Paul Budnitz, who also owns Kidrobot \u2013 an artisan art toy and fashion maker \u2013 and Budnitz Bicycles, where he designs and makes of luxury bikes. The cheapest starts at $2,395.<\/p>\n Currently, Ello is in a pleasing palatte of black and grey; its logo, a black sphere with a smile drawn on in white with no eyes is a clue to the simplistic aesthetic the designers are going for. You choose to add people as either \u201cfriends\u201d or \u201cnoise\u201d, which is a way to differentiate between posts you care more or less about \u2013 others don\u2019t get to know which feed you put them in. The developers say this aims to reduce clutter.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n Source: The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is it the Facebook-killer? Ello, the so-new-it\u2019s-glistening, so-hip-it-hurts upstart social network has set out to be the artsy, LGBTQ-friendly, anti-advertising and anti-big-data alternative to social media giants like Facebook and Twitter. After an explosion of popularity this week, its small team is scrambling to deal with unprecedented growth, with as many as 35,000 people requesting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":51531,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[18],"yoast_head":"\n