ELLO: the new social network that doesn’t see you as a product
There’s a new social networking site roaming the streets of the Internet. “Another one?!” you ask yourselves. Yes, but in this case, it says it’s here to make your life easier and more transparent. Ello, created by a group of artists and developers, is a social network without ads where what you want to share is what really matters.
The creators of Ello want to make a difference playing on the same level as a standard user. This is why it tells us we shouldn’t be products, and points the finger at the other social media sites for seeing the users as stats.
Although it was launched in August, during the past week, Ello’s users have grown and there are now approximately 40,000 new registries every hour. But, why are people joining this platform? After taking a look, we can think of a few reasons.
For starters, to be a part of the Ello community, you need an invitation from someone who’s already inside. That registration method is very effective, because it provides communication by word of mouth, and encourages you to send invitation to your friends, which means the advertising and promotion is in the users’ hands. This can sound ironic coming from a brand that claims it doesn’t believe in advertising. However, technically, they aren’t investing in it.
Once we’re in, Ello reminds us a lot of Twitter. A timeline shows us the latest updates from our own profile and our friends’. The goal is to share clean and direct messages. Everything is simple and polished. This is part of Ello’s philosophy, which is detailed on their manifesto.
Zero tolerance… to advertising
In this manifesto, the founders talk about using social media as a “place to connect, create, and celebrate life”. This is why Ello doesn’t have adverts, and it allows the user to give his consent if he wants his data to be used for the network’s research reasons. Ello promises it will never sell user data to third parties, because they detest adverts as much as any other user out there.
Advertising seems to have turned into an essential element for something to grow online. But suddenly, a new social networking site comes along and puts its foot down against these practices. Many social media platforms started out with no ads, and have ended up jumping on the bandwagon. Will Ello always be faithful to its principles? Or will it slowly cave into commercial interests?
Internet República
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