No ads, all posts on Ello are publicly accessible.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: Since the last few days the social media spectrum is bustling with talks about Ello, a new website that threatens the moral side of the world’s largest social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.
Since the beginning of the social media war, many companies have come up with arsenals intended to kill Facebook and Twitter. The most noteworthy among them was the search engine giant Google, which thought Google + will annihilate both their rivals, replicating what it does with Yahoo! in search. But none of their tactics worked and Facebook continued its voyage.
The key focus of Ello is to attack the moral side of Facebook and Twitter, which sell ads by compromising the privacy of the users to third-party companies for revenue generation.
The manifesto of Ello reads: “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. We believe there is a better way.”
The biggest highlight of Ello is its ad-free model, which has already raised many eyebrows in the tech arena as they wonder how the company can sustain without ads for a long time. Ello is not interested in tracking the users and their activities for assisting advertisers to get maximum revenue.
Registering with Ello is not as easy as signing up for Facebook or Twitter. The company has cleverly played with the user’s interest in the newly launched social media site. As of now users will have to request an invitation for registering with Ello, which will be later processed by the technical team, generating a password for logging in.
When social networking sites including Facebook and Twitter change their privacy settings in regular intervals, their new rival is doing just the opposite. Ello has no privacy. All the pics, posts and videos you post on Ello are publicly accessible. Anyone can find you, provided you haven’t faked the account, nobody can block you and you cannot block anybody (these seem to be flaws than features).
So if you are “Scopophobic” – the fear of being seen or stared at by others, Ello is the most unlikely website you would want to register with.
Ello is not giving a visual treat like many of the sites, at least during the initial days after the launch. It has a black and white design with minimal features. Users who logged in to Ello complained of difficulty in finding their friends. Many are of the opinion that the site should add a better discovery tool, but it is expected that in the coming days Ello will refurbish the design and tools, making it more user friendly.
The manifesto if Ello gives a clear overview of what we can expect from its design. It says “We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.”
When Facebook and Twitter started selling advertisements, all their features indirectly became tools of revenue generation. The likes and dislikes of the users became data for advertisers and slowly they move away from the designated path. Ello is trying to bring back the old days when nobody imposed users to share and like, which Facebook and Twitter stared doing lately.
Ello believes that “a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.”