Ello.co : A welcome change to the social media landscape

So there's this new social media thing. The "anti-facebook" out there in the virtual space. It is calling to all to join and not letting anyone join at the same time.  The elite, those with the coveted golden ticket can enter and partake on the newest social media site.  The Ello.co site is invite only while it is in beta testing.  I was fortunate enough to be able to access through someone in one of my Google+ circles (see Google+ is good for something :)).  I had a slight bit of difficulty entering the site because I was granted an invite, but just one I had to type in myself not the actual formal email invite.  So because I was trying to login using the regular ello.co site, and not the ello.co/join site, I had some issues BUT eventually we figured it all out and I was in. I soon discovered that I did not have the 25 invites that were once available.  This may have been because their server was down for a bit.  Virtually hundreds and hundreds of people were joining every minute.  The site was buggy, but in beta that is to be expected.

You can try and request a login, but it may take quite some time as the guys over at Ello.co are crazy busy right now.

My first impressions of the Ello site stem from my eye as an artist.  The site is minimalist in design, utilizes clean black and white colors in the UX and circles similar to those in G+ for avatars.  It's pretty.  It's sleek, and it's absolutely clutter free.  What does that mean?  Well one thing that really stands out from other social sites is the overt lack of advertising on the site.  I LOVE THAT. At first I thought I would hate it but the way the page looks so empty is almost a peaceful welcome from the chaos over on Facebook.  On Facebook we are bombarded and handed ads, and news, and posts and force-fed marketing from paying customers...if I see another ad for bras just because I made a post about 'Breast' Cancer Awareness month I'm going to scream.  On Ello, we are free.  Free from the ads, free from the restrictions, and free from having to worry about just WHERE our information is being distributed to.  It's kinda nice.

Ello.co The sleek new design is aesthetically pleasing to the designers eye.

There is a place to create an online profile and add a few... I stress FEW details about yourself.  It is a minimalist site after all. They've even shortened the online :) to just ).  Ello folks will know that that is actually a smiley and not just you accidentally creating a type o of an original smiley. It's very chic, I think. I'm not going to lie when I say that I felt a little guilty filling in my profile and actually FILLING IN my profile. I added a photo, some additional content and used my twitter handle for my user name which I can change ANY TIME I WANT to ANYTHING I WANT with zero complications. I edited it to scale it back and try to be one with the Ello.co ambiance. The jury is still out on whether or not I succeeded.

So I added a couple of friends and was able to look up a few new interesting ones since my login yesterday.  It seems that the majority of users are creatives and designers and just looking for places to express themselves.  They post some beautiful things.  Art, designs, gifs, and photos to lure you deeper into the Ello experience.  I think the newness of it all is really the draw here.  Facebook has been the norm for quite sometime and in many other places technology grows exponentially.  The social media realm, not so much.

So, could this new social media space ever replace Facebook? Could that ever happen?

The answer is NEVER.

Unless of course you ask the guys over at myspace.

I think that Ello.co has the potential to be a place to actually work along side Facebook.  It has the potential to become the Facebook escape pod for many that don't really like being told what we can and cannot see in our feeds.  Businesses might be out of luck if they're looking to get in front of the growing masses that Ello.co plans to acquire as the site grows.  There are no plans of having ads. This is what the fine folks over at Ello.co think about all of that nonsense.  Pulled directly from the Ello.co site....simply stated:

Ello doesn't have ads

Virtually every other social network is run by and for advertisers. Behind the scenes, armies of ad salesmen and data miners track and record every move you make. Data about you is auctioned off to advertisers and data brokers. Under the guise of offering a free service, users of other social networks pay a high price in lack of privacy and intrusive advertising.

You're the product that's being bought and sold.

Collecting and selling your personal information, reading your posts, and mapping your social connections for profit is unethical. Every new feature on an ad-driven network is either a new way to gather more data about you (which can be sold), or show you more ads (which are auctioned), or both.

Ello is totally ad-free. Ello does not sell data about you to third parties, including advertisers and data brokers.

OK, but what about all those other social networks that didn't have ads at first (but do now)?

Many other social networks (like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, Instagram, etc. etc.) started out ad-free, then suddenly switched gears. They modified their privacy policies, started selling information about their users to data brokers, and bombarded us with ads. Many users of those networks feel betrayed.

Ello's entire structure is based around a no-ad and no data-mining policy. Quite frankly, were we to break this commitment, we would lose most of the Ello community. Including ourselves, because we dislike ads more than almost anyone else out there. Which is why we built Ello in the first place.

To make this crystal-clear to everyone, we've put a very obvious DELETE ACCOUNT link on every user's settings page. If you ever don't like the direction Ello is heading, we invite you to delete your Ello account. Of course, we'd prefer you to stay a part of our community, so please send comments and ideas to hello@ello.co.

Well there ya go.  Seems to put quite an interesting spin on the social media landscape does it not?  Love it or hate it this blogger thinks that Ello.co is changing the way we do social. It's really refreshing. 

I still have a few invites left.  If you're interested let me know and I'll shoot you one so you can check it out for yourself.

As always...this post was brought to you today by the Letter E...(For Ello.)  )