As if there were not enough social media platforms to distract you from your responsibilities, we have been graced with yet another.
Say hello to Ello.
This new site was created by artists Paul Budnitz, Berger & Föhr and Mode Set with the aim of giving users an ad-free space through which they can network. While it is still in its beta stage, the site is invite-only.
The layout itself is simple black and white, with not much else to distract users. In fact, there’s so little clutter that it makes the learning process a bit more confusing—we’re used to busy websites.
The setup of the profiles and the “walls” that users have seems like a mixture of Twitter and Tumblr; there’s a level of anonymity in your profile, but usernames are set up like Twitter handles.
Fortunately for those in need of a how-to, there is a plethora of FAQs that the creators have set up to help with the ease of learning. Hints of anti-Facebook elitism pop up in any question regarding advertisements and how Ello makes money, though it’s not hard to see why. It feels somewhat pretentious to an extent, as if Ello is the socially conscious, hipstery younger sibling.
From my own experience on the site, there is much potential to be a useful means of staying connected. Although I’m fairly new to Ello, I’m finding that a good chunk of the content is photo driven. That’s not to say that there isn’t text-heavy posts by users, but the quality of the photos trumps that of Facebook and even Tumblr.
The popularity of this new social media site has gained momentum since its launch in August. Some have even said that this could be the site that topples Facebook from its position as top dog of networking sites, but that seems a bit outlandish at this point in time.
The biggest question is how long Ello will remain ad-free. Although there is no cost to using the site’s basic services, any additional feature would run users up a couple dollars. Talk around the web suggests that this kind of in-app purchasing cannot sustain the site, but other companies have remained free of ads and become tycoons within their platform (case in point: Netflix).
I suggest first checking out the site and seeing if it will give you what you’re looking for. If “likes” are your lifeblood, this might not be as well-suited for your social media needs as Facebook may be. Head over to ello.co to find out if this is the platform of your dreams.
