Ello is a new social media created by Paul Budnitz and Todd Berger in March 2014. It promises to be a social media service entirely ad-free. I first knew about this social media service back in September 2014 when it gained some publicity after Facebook’s controversial real name policy. However, the service does not seem to gain many active users in the following months and people started to forget about it.
To use Ello, we can’t just go there and register. Instead, we need to request an invitation. I requested my invitation back in September 2014 and finally got it earlier today. Finally I can peek of what’s actually inside.
Facebook has ads. People know it, people still use it. Facebook has some controversial rules. People still use it. Facebook has some people confused about privacy setting, yet they still use it. Why? Because it’s called “social” media. People use it because a lot of their friends are there. And for a new social media to gain any significant user-base, it should attract huge amount of users and managed to make them stay active for the next months, or the whole thing will become pointless. And I think that’s what happened here. They simply repeat Google+ mistake by not allowing everyone to join immediately. The invitation-only system will drive many people away and that’s exactly the opposite of what they want. If they think they can get away because of “beta” status, their service might die before even exiting beta. Only a company as big as Google has the privilege to play around with beta products for years.
Now, let’s talk about the URL. Ello does not have dot com domain. Instead, it uses dot co domain (without “m”). Even though dot co domain is already getting more popular, many people would still get confused.
Next, the interface. After login to Ello the first time, what I have is a super simplistic user interface that’s mainly white background with some black menus. For few seconds, I was lost. Then I started to move my mouse pointer around and figured out its basic navigation style. I would say, it’s not the hardest interface to learn, but certainly not the most “intuitive” as well. And that, is a huge issue for a new service with almost no user trying to convince everyone to use it.
After exploring Ello for few minutes, I immediately decided not to use it. It’s indeed “minimalistic”, but NOT really “simple” as the interface is rather confusing. It does not give me many things to get excited about. Nothing I can’t do using all my existing social media accounts, not just Facebook. Twitter offers something “different” with the idea of micro-sharing and real-time information. Pinterest offers the concept of gathering and organizing pictures as its selling point. LinkedIn offers the “professional” version of social media. Even when I started Google+ few years ago, I still decided to stick around for few months because I find the interface interesting and the concept of circle is rather unique. This Ello… has nothing unique or better to offer. So it does not even stay in my “occasionally-accessed” list.
looks like a cemetery