The internet keeps growing, and that kept it from being stagnant. When it comes to business on the internet, most people do what they can do to give almost whatever they can, and in return, they get what they want: money and data. However, data on the internet may contain sensitive information that users don't want to actually share. But on social media networks, people are more or less, willing to give their information. But to those that concerns privacy and hates online ads, a social network answers the request: meet Ello, the social network that wants to be anti-Facebook.
Ello swears that it will never share or sell user data with any third-parties. Virtually all social networks are run by advertisers. These people are where the money is, and they drive how social media works today. Social networks record every move their users make, so the data could then be sold and auctioned to advertisers and data brokers. In the social network industry, users are products that are bought and sold.
Under the disguise "free service", users actually pay a high price in intrusive ads and lack of privacy. And this is where Ello steps in.
Designed by Paul Budnitz with six other people, Ello sees things differently. The social network have its own way of thinking, and somehow rather radical. When most social networks think that harvesting users' data is just another usual thing, Ello regards this as unnecessary, unethical and creepy.
Ello is just driven by "beauty, simplicity and transparency."
"There were seven of us to start, and we built it as a private network," said Budnitz. "We were really fed up with the other social networks, and we wanted to share our art and our work in a place where we wouldn't we shown ads."
As for the name, "Ello", is actually "Hello" with the letter "H" dropped. "We wanted to make something that was very easy to use, so you take out everything you don't need."
First released as a beta, proclaiming that "You Are Not A Product" Ello has actually been publicly around since March 18th, 2014. The social network started generating buzz because of its high stance that differentiates it from other social networks, paid advertising and data collection. When it was first released, Ello comes with an invite-only basis, so people who wants to join need to have someone they know already in the club. The buzz was generated as a sudden increase of request from people wanting to join the network, posted on other social networks.
With 34,000 invitation request an hour, Ello is significantly getting popular for a social network that only had 90 users in August 2014.
Ello's popularity is also boosted because the service allows users to use pseudonyms, rather than real names.
Ello works similar to Twitter: users' posts are public and may include links to other websites. There are two feeds: "Friends" for close people, and "Noise" for a stream of everything else. The social network also borrows the "@" symbol as a feature where users can mention others on their comments or posts.
At the moment of introduction, Ello's feature is not remarkable and nothing that it has is new. The design is kept simple with plenty of white space. But Ello's power over everything else is its lack of ads and privacy ideals. But business is still business, and the website do need to make money somehow. Ello hopes that it can make money by letting users pay for premium features that are not available for free users.
"We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity," says Ello in its manifesto. "You are not a product."
However strict Ello is, the website still need the things that "tickles" privacy-minded people. The site uses cookies to let its servers recognize users' web browsers, and to provide it the necessary information about the behavior of its users. Despite the use of cookies is common in the modern web, Ello's privacy policy has revealed that it may also embed cookies in email to track whether the messages are being read. And for users that want to delete their accounts, Ello stated that it may still store backups of the data on its servers. Ello also uses Google Analytics to generate information about users' behavior and IP addresses.
"To the best of our knowledge, the information gathered by Google on Ello's behalf is collected in such a way that neither Ello, nor Google, can easily trace saved information back to any individual user," explained Ello.
Ello says that it may share personal information with third-parties, if it's required by law.
To make things easier for users, Ello provides an option to opt-out of Google Analytics in the settings page. Ello also respects the "Do Not Track" setting in most browsers which is designed to send a signal to web companies to restrict the data they collect.
And as for whether Ello will be able to survive in the rapidly evolving world on modern internet, "we're not interested in ruling the world," the company says on its website. A big punch to Facebook.
"We think people that are motivated to do things like that have unresolved psychological problems," says Ello.
The War to Keep Privacy Private
The fact that Ello is trying to make, the social network is giving users a more private environment to be in. Despite being out of the mainstream, Ello is not alone in the pursuit of privacy. Ad-supported websites like Google and Facebook are also trying to put more privacy-oriented features in their cores.
As one of the newest member in the social network industry, Ello has a lot to learn and a lot to organize. Ello don't have the boundary between permissibility and control. It also lacks a formalized way to determine whether a content is appropriate or not. To backup its claiming of caring for users more than advertisers, Ello asumes that privacy from corporations and from people are the same thing.
Ello is also not the first challenger to Facebook's dominance in the social network industry. Similar alternatives such as Diaspora, Path, and App.net had tried, but failed. For the question whether the social network will thrive, from a certain point-of-view, Ello as an upstart, may have to face a tough time proving itself worthy enough. As the competition in the social network industry is getting crowded, people get bored easily. But if Ello is able to eventually mature and succeed, it will certainly highlight the revolution that privacy-minded people want. But no matter how successful Ello will become, it's still can't be compared to Facebook.
Comparing Ello to Facebook is like comparing DuckDuckGo with Google. Despite they move in the same industry, it doesn't mean that they are the same. They are different animals that just see things differently.
