Meet Ello, a private and ad-free Facebook replacement

Ello is an ad-free, invite-only, independent social network that went viral last week, gaining traction as the “anti-Facebook” Facebook. The platform – which was released in March of this year – carries no adverts and does not sell user data, making it a sweet deal for anyone partial to social media, but weary of the consequences. 

“We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment,” reads Ello's manifesto. “Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product.” With that said, the inevitable question of how will it make money comes? Paul Budnitz, Vermont-based bicycle shop owner turned Ello founder, says that the platform will eventually raise money by selling access to features similar to app stores. “Like the app store, we're going to sell features for a few dollars,” he told the BBC.

Currently, the site is in beta (hence the invite-only) and resembles a combination of WordPress and Twitter, but with slightly less features. Users can still post status updates and pictures, comment on their friends’ content, and even post GIFs – something that no even Facebook itself allows. Suffice to say, the platform is still under development with additional privacy settings and a mobile app coming soon.
 
So, why the sudden interest in a seemingly oversaturated market? One theory suggests that the rise in popularity may be correlated to the recent backlash that occurred over Facebook’s real name policy, which requires all users to go by their legal name. For some, such as performers preferring to go by their stage name, this did not bode well. Naturally, Ello’s casual-minded terms of agreement were the next best thing. 

GIF courtesy of Mashable

Ello has seen such enormous traffic over the past weekend that reports have sprouted up indicating that anywhere between 4,000 to 30,000 beta requests were submitted per hour, inadvertently causing a DDoS attack (distributed denial of Service) that took the server offline. Seeing as how Budnitz initially designed the platform as a private network for only 90 people, this type of web demands some pretty hefty out-of-pocket backend upgrades.

“We're learning as we go but we have a very strong tech crew and back end,” founder Paul Budnitz told the BBC. “It's in beta and it's buggy and it does weird stuff – and it's all being fixed as quickly as we can.”

It’s too early to gauge the kind of impact Ello will have on the overall social media landscape, but if beta keys selling on eBay from anywhere between $5 to $500 is an indicator of anything, it’s hype and curiosity. Perhaps the ripe combination of Facebook’s declining young audience and the lack of a suitable replacement may place Elllo in a unique position to deliver what’s been missing; one can only hope it doesn’t get stuck doing children’s parties with all the other washed-up “Facebook killers” – I’m looking at you Google +.

Via Ello/BBC