7 ms·

Ello: an ad-free social network

46 points by alfredxing 12y ago

sirji 12y ago
Before a social network becomes famous, it is always ad-free :)
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
random42 12y ago
How do you intent to monetize? In other words, why should I believe this website will not shutdown till the money/motivation runs out?
alphonse23 12y ago
You website broke the back button.
- ocfx 12y ago
  Yeah, that back button bullshit gave me a big NOPE
sloanesturz 12y ago
This seems pretty similar to http://app.net http://app.net when they started out. I don't think the "no ads social network" really panned out for them -- they tried charging users monthly for the site and have since pivoted so many times they're probably dizzy. Best of luck to ello.co, maybe the NSA revelations will make everyone a little more careful about who gets access to what they share!
onedev 12y ago
"Paul Budnitz conceives and creates beautiful products that change the world." Yeah. Ok. Great, thanks for changing the world.
- abrkn 12y ago
  Just look at this bike[1]! [1] http://budnitzbicycles.com/ http://budnitzbicycles.com/
  - nobodyshere 12y ago
    Ok, now that's the world changer. Except there's nothing unique about that bike.
    - guigar 12y ago
      It comes with a bottle opener attached. Definitely a world changer.
    - nakkiel 12y ago
      But it says it's "radical" mate! /sarcasm
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
tatterdemalion 12y ago
I see nothing on that site that would make me trust it with my data. It says it won't monetize through ads, but how will it monetize? Is my data involved other than through targeting ads at me? ? Why should I trust a centralized, unfederated service with my data as opposed to one that I could host myself (such as Diaspora)? The site has a vague privacy policy of sorts related to its Google Analytics, but that doesn't have anything to do with the data that I would actually upload and store on the site for 'social networking' purposes. Also the site itself feels very overproduced; back button is broken et cetera. I agree completely with the criticism of other services in the "manifesto," but nothing about the site suggests its a viable alternative.
chris_engel 12y ago
I heard a discussion about that thing a couple of days ago in a local radio show here and they talked about how promising and cool that new social network is. They also basically said that everyone who thinks it wouldnt make it is stupid and doesnt know what he's saying. I don't think they'll be making it. I can't count the projects anymore that tried to be a "better facebook" or "better whatsapp". The harsh truth ist: people simply don't care. The number of people caring enough about their privacy to move to another social network just because of that (that seems to be ellos single selling point) is very very small. It will only be a couple of hipsters showing off how cool and different they are. In a couple of weeks, nobody will talk about ello anymore. Its a bit sad but thats how it is. Just look at all the other approaches that have failed already. Even app.net that had a lot of media coverage failed in the end because people just don't care. Even the oh-my-god-we-are-so-awesome-and-invite-only trick won't do it for them if they don't satisfy a very strong need for the users - and they don't; because there is none.
- teekert 12y ago
  The other Whatsapp, Telegram, is doing pretty well it seems in my environment with most contact immediately enabling end-to-end encryption. Maybe I'm in a privacy-aware bubble. True, there as also that other twitter people were enthusiastic about (even though it didn't do anything different from status.net). Diaspora didn't really become popular as well.
  - lucaspiller 12y ago
    A friend who likes shiny new things made our group of friends and myself install Telegram a few months ago. We still use WhatsApp or iMessage.
    - johnchristopher 12y ago
      Im my group of friends I am that guy who likes shiny new things and nothing has beaten mail/sms/phone (and facebook messages for vague acquaintances as a last resort) yet.
    - 12y ago
plumeria 12y ago
https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/
binarymax 12y ago
Hint: if you are starting a social network, let people sign up as soon as you go public. The number of users you have is what will make or break you. Denying immediate entry is turning away your customers, most likely for good.
- ebzlo 12y ago
  Not necessarily, Facebook started in the MySpace-era and was restricted. Sometimes exclusivity can be a perk.
  - toyg 12y ago
    For Facebook, exclusivity was a feature because it was directly related to craved social status (belonging to an elite university). For GMail, exclusivity worked because it was directly related to craved features (large capacity for email attachments). I don't see "lack of ads" as particularly craved by users. My wife actively wants to see ads (to the suffering of my credit card). Unless they find something else to latch on to, this will end up being yet another also-ran social.
kevinthew 12y ago
The invite-only thing works when people actually are compelled to sign up for your site. What is compelling about this? Seriously, I'm already inundated with a bunch of equally terrible social media sites, why would I indulge myself the chore of signing up for this one or fish for an invite to it?
leke 12y ago
What advantage does ello have over a popular and established ad free SN like diaspora?
Renaud 12y ago
It's not clear who this new social network is supposed to be for. If they want everyone, then it will surely fail. Everyone has Facebook already where their friends and family dwell, and no-one seriously care much about the NSA (I have nothing to hide!) or that they are the product (people have come to be tamed and accept ads as a normality of life). They should probably target a particular audience, like linked in targets professionals, from what I see, Ello should maybe target designers and creatives. Why should there be only one 'social network'? I'd love a software developer social network where I can make friends, share some code that would be rendered nicely on screen, have conversations that can be private or public, ask questions that would otherwise be closed on SO, etc Same for electronics hobbyists, graphic designers, photographers, ... Facebook is the lowest common denominator, but it excels at no particular task: why can't we belong to multiple social networks, each geared toward something that is central to our life?
- igravious 12y ago
  Geez, a bit of competition would be nice -- makes for better products. So only Zuckerberg is allowed to mediate all our social communication? Lucky him. I seriously care much about having my private communication snooped on. I'm someone. I hate ads, I'd prefer to pay a social network so that I do not have to see ads. > They should probably target a particular audience > Why should there be only one 'social network'? A better question is, why do you think that multiple social networks must serve niches? Why can't they all compete for the same pie just like in practically all areas of commerce? Are you saying that I should only get my full-fat milk from company A, my semi-skinned from company B, and my butter-milk from company C? Because that's what it sounds like. You wouldn't tolerate that in other areas of your life, why are you unconcerned about it when it comes to something so personal -- your social communication and its history?
  - mcintyre1994 12y ago
    I'm not really up to date on what they're doing at the minute but can I ask why app.net doesn't meet your requirements? The fundamental difference here seems to be app.net always charge but ello gives more flexibility around if and what to buy - or is there something I'm missing? Also I agree that competition is a good thing here but a social network that's trying to connect me to everyone like Facebook is going to face serious network effects obviously, and it'll be seriously hard to become useful for that purpose.
shmerl 12y ago
If it's not decentralized it doesn't solve major issues of most social networks around there.
lucb1e 12y ago
For anyone else who thinks the site is a bit weird and has a hard time finding their profit model: > Ello is completely free to use. > From time to time we offer special features to our users. If we create a special feature that you like, you can choose to pay a very small amount of money to add it to your Ello account forever. > The vast majority of Ello's features, the ones that all of us use every day, are always going to be free, and we'll keep improving them. When you choose to pay a small amount of money for a feature that you get to use, you help support Ello as an ad-free network and help us make it better and better. -- https://ello.co/wtf/post/why-no-ads https://ello.co/wtf/post/why-no-ads That sounds like an okay business model to me. Depends what features will be paid and which will be free, but given the motivation behind creating the site in the first place, it'll probably be reasonable.
- huhtenberg 12y ago
  > That sounds like an okay business model to me. It most likely won't work. They have recurrent expenses associated with running a service, but they plan to support it with one-time fees. This has an absolutely uncertain scalability profile. At some point their existing user base will get all the features they need and stop paying, meaning that they will need to rely on acquiring new users for revenue, which in turn will lead to higher expenses. And this starts to look as a classic pyramid scheme to me (without even considering things like salaries and dividends). Alternatively they can try harder to entice people to buy into the features, but this would mean artificially restricting functionality, castrating the free feature set, etc. I guess if they got enough momentum, they can get away with it, but in the end it's not that much better than an ad-based model.
adventured 12y ago
Scroll down, scroll up, then try hitting back to leave the site. One of the most annoying things you can ever do to me as a user.
johnchristopher 12y ago
> 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. Cool, where is the (open)-source ?
- jejacks0n 12y ago
  I'm a developer at Modeset, we have some open source, and try to contribute back whenever possible and time permits. If you specifically mean code for the ello.co product, there will likely be things that come out of it over time -- it's a pretty hard business model to open source stuff that you haven't completed yet. https://github.com/modeset/teaspoon https://github.com/modeset/teaspoon for instance.
  - johnchristopher 12y ago
    Ah, I have a better outlook on the meaning of the statement I quoted now, thank you (sorry for the harsh one-liner).
arb99 12y ago
1) Who cares about ads on Facebook? They are not giant ads, or popunders or whatever. Sometimes they are relevant. The FB page 'ads' (that say they are sponsored) can be very relevant sometimes. People care more about things like privacy, and how easy it is to share things ('statuses' / photos / videos) with certain people. 2) The design (no offense to whoever made it) is a bit weird. Monospaced font? 3) The part where you click on the arrow (on the right of the page). It isn't clear what that is about. It is 'invite only' but they want you to submit a photo? (https://www.dropbox.com/s/wx88cyg0lh3u5j8/Screenshot%202014-09-21%2013.06.18.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wx88cyg0lh3u5j8/Screenshot%202014-...) 4) and the profiles do look (again no offense) like a crappy tumblr blog (with a touch of instagram, which IMO isn't really a social network (no messaging, it is just a fancy photo gallery site. No one would call flickr a social networking site). Maybe thats the kind of audience they are going after... but it looks a bit amateurish. Whereas facebook, linkedin, even twitter all look a lot more fine tuned. 5) But profiles seem to be able to have direct outgoing links (no nofollow, which will encourage spam a little bit), so if it wasn't invite only it would get filled up with spam quickly.
lovamova 12y ago
Better alternative than Ello at http://sublevel.net/ http://sublevel.net/ which is already a few months old.
czottmann 12y ago
If I understand it completely, they're trying to become a centralized blend of Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, and they have no real idea how to make money except accepting tips for infrequently introduced features. I wish them good luck but I have major doubts. Personally, I think I'll stick with #pants, a light-weight blogging engine coming with a fully decentralized social network built-in. It's free, fully open-source, and embraces the principles of the IndieWeb movement, which I think is a great idea. http://pants.social/vkk764 http://pants.social/vkk764 Full disclosure: built by my best friend. Other than that, I'm unbiased.
mofo 12y ago
https://ello.co/budnitz/post/cwGa3WXn4xz3zUsxcwCouQ https://ello.co/budnitz/post/cwGa3WXn4xz3zUsxcwCouQ
mikeyla85 12y ago
Here's a post I wrote that encapuslates a lot of these responses: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-morgenstern/ello-isnt-going-to-work-s_b_5879942.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-morgenstern/ello-isnt-...
faenvie 12y ago
I find it amazing, how some of you "experts" judge without deeper knowledge. A good part of you without even taking a look. The comments on the bycicles are downright stupid ignorance. I am not sure about ello myself, but it seems worth a try for me as a non-facebook-user. Esp. because of the things statet in ellos manifesto. i maybe able to judge in a few weeks. I would have apprecheated, if ello comes from europe or southamerika because people outside the US (i live in germany) are fed up with the "american-way" of running things, which facebook is an characteristical case for.
faenvie 12y ago
I find it amazing, how some of you "experts" judge without deeper knowledge. A good part of you without even taking a look. The comments on the bycicles are downright stupid ignorance. I am not sure about ello myself, but it seems worth a try for me as a non-facebook-user. Esp. because of the things statet in ellos manifesto. i maybe able to judge in a few weeks. I would have apprecheated, if ello comes from europe or southamerika because people outside the US (i live in germany) are fed up with the "american-way" of running things, which facebook is an characteristical case for.
NicoleToland 12y ago
While searching for new social networks, I came across an app called Groopie. I'm still trying to figure out how to use it but you can record videos with your friends. You ping them to record. After they are done recording, their footage will get uploaded to your phone in seconds, then you can edit and blend the two to create one video. Seems like they are on to something!
webulator 12y ago
It's not secure or encrypted, they see everything you do and so therefor so can others. A next gen mobile app called Kover is in beta in the apple AppStore. It's completely encrypted and works either facebook and Twitter even.

46 points by alfredxing 12y ago

sirji 12y ago

Before a social network becomes famous, it is always ad-free :)

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

random42 12y ago

How do you intent to monetize? In other words, why should I believe this website will not shutdown till the money/motivation runs out?

alphonse23 12y ago

You website broke the back button.

ocfx 12y ago
Yeah, that back button bullshit gave me a big NOPE

sloanesturz 12y ago

This seems pretty similar to http://app.net http://app.net when they started out. I don't think the "no ads social network" really panned out for them -- they tried charging users monthly for the site and have since pivoted so many times they're probably dizzy. Best of luck to ello.co, maybe the NSA revelations will make everyone a little more careful about who gets access to what they share!

onedev 12y ago

"Paul Budnitz conceives and creates beautiful products that change the world." Yeah. Ok. Great, thanks for changing the world.

abrkn 12y ago
Just look at this bike[1]! [1] http://budnitzbicycles.com/ http://budnitzbicycles.com/
- nobodyshere 12y ago
  Ok, now that's the world changer. Except there's nothing unique about that bike.
  - guigar 12y ago
    It comes with a bottle opener attached. Definitely a world changer.
  - nakkiel 12y ago
    But it says it's "radical" mate! /sarcasm
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

tatterdemalion 12y ago

I see nothing on that site that would make me trust it with my data. It says it won't monetize through ads, but how will it monetize? Is my data involved other than through targeting ads at me? ? Why should I trust a centralized, unfederated service with my data as opposed to one that I could host myself (such as Diaspora)? The site has a vague privacy policy of sorts related to its Google Analytics, but that doesn't have anything to do with the data that I would actually upload and store on the site for 'social networking' purposes. Also the site itself feels very overproduced; back button is broken et cetera. I agree completely with the criticism of other services in the "manifesto," but nothing about the site suggests its a viable alternative.

chris_engel 12y ago

I heard a discussion about that thing a couple of days ago in a local radio show here and they talked about how promising and cool that new social network is. They also basically said that everyone who thinks it wouldnt make it is stupid and doesnt know what he's saying. I don't think they'll be making it. I can't count the projects anymore that tried to be a "better facebook" or "better whatsapp". The harsh truth ist: people simply don't care. The number of people caring enough about their privacy to move to another social network just because of that (that seems to be ellos single selling point) is very very small. It will only be a couple of hipsters showing off how cool and different they are. In a couple of weeks, nobody will talk about ello anymore. Its a bit sad but thats how it is. Just look at all the other approaches that have failed already. Even app.net that had a lot of media coverage failed in the end because people just don't care. Even the oh-my-god-we-are-so-awesome-and-invite-only trick won't do it for them if they don't satisfy a very strong need for the users - and they don't; because there is none.

teekert 12y ago
The other Whatsapp, Telegram, is doing pretty well it seems in my environment with most contact immediately enabling end-to-end encryption. Maybe I'm in a privacy-aware bubble. True, there as also that other twitter people were enthusiastic about (even though it didn't do anything different from status.net). Diaspora didn't really become popular as well.
- lucaspiller 12y ago
  A friend who likes shiny new things made our group of friends and myself install Telegram a few months ago. We still use WhatsApp or iMessage.
  - johnchristopher 12y ago
    Im my group of friends I am that guy who likes shiny new things and nothing has beaten mail/sms/phone (and facebook messages for vague acquaintances as a last resort) yet.
  - 12y ago

plumeria 12y ago

https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/

binarymax 12y ago

Hint: if you are starting a social network, let people sign up as soon as you go public. The number of users you have is what will make or break you. Denying immediate entry is turning away your customers, most likely for good.

ebzlo 12y ago
Not necessarily, Facebook started in the MySpace-era and was restricted. Sometimes exclusivity can be a perk.
- toyg 12y ago
  For Facebook, exclusivity was a feature because it was directly related to craved social status (belonging to an elite university). For GMail, exclusivity worked because it was directly related to craved features (large capacity for email attachments). I don't see "lack of ads" as particularly craved by users. My wife actively wants to see ads (to the suffering of my credit card). Unless they find something else to latch on to, this will end up being yet another also-ran social.

kevinthew 12y ago

The invite-only thing works when people actually are compelled to sign up for your site. What is compelling about this? Seriously, I'm already inundated with a bunch of equally terrible social media sites, why would I indulge myself the chore of signing up for this one or fish for an invite to it?

leke 12y ago

What advantage does ello have over a popular and established ad free SN like diaspora?

Renaud 12y ago

It's not clear who this new social network is supposed to be for. If they want everyone, then it will surely fail. Everyone has Facebook already where their friends and family dwell, and no-one seriously care much about the NSA (I have nothing to hide!) or that they are the product (people have come to be tamed and accept ads as a normality of life). They should probably target a particular audience, like linked in targets professionals, from what I see, Ello should maybe target designers and creatives. Why should there be only one 'social network'? I'd love a software developer social network where I can make friends, share some code that would be rendered nicely on screen, have conversations that can be private or public, ask questions that would otherwise be closed on SO, etc Same for electronics hobbyists, graphic designers, photographers, ... Facebook is the lowest common denominator, but it excels at no particular task: why can't we belong to multiple social networks, each geared toward something that is central to our life?

igravious 12y ago
Geez, a bit of competition would be nice -- makes for better products. So only Zuckerberg is allowed to mediate all our social communication? Lucky him. I seriously care much about having my private communication snooped on. I'm someone. I hate ads, I'd prefer to pay a social network so that I do not have to see ads. > They should probably target a particular audience > Why should there be only one 'social network'? A better question is, why do you think that multiple social networks must serve niches? Why can't they all compete for the same pie just like in practically all areas of commerce? Are you saying that I should only get my full-fat milk from company A, my semi-skinned from company B, and my butter-milk from company C? Because that's what it sounds like. You wouldn't tolerate that in other areas of your life, why are you unconcerned about it when it comes to something so personal -- your social communication and its history?
- mcintyre1994 12y ago
  I'm not really up to date on what they're doing at the minute but can I ask why app.net doesn't meet your requirements? The fundamental difference here seems to be app.net always charge but ello gives more flexibility around if and what to buy - or is there something I'm missing? Also I agree that competition is a good thing here but a social network that's trying to connect me to everyone like Facebook is going to face serious network effects obviously, and it'll be seriously hard to become useful for that purpose.

shmerl 12y ago

If it's not decentralized it doesn't solve major issues of most social networks around there.

lucb1e 12y ago

For anyone else who thinks the site is a bit weird and has a hard time finding their profit model: > Ello is completely free to use. > From time to time we offer special features to our users. If we create a special feature that you like, you can choose to pay a very small amount of money to add it to your Ello account forever. > The vast majority of Ello's features, the ones that all of us use every day, are always going to be free, and we'll keep improving them. When you choose to pay a small amount of money for a feature that you get to use, you help support Ello as an ad-free network and help us make it better and better. -- https://ello.co/wtf/post/why-no-ads https://ello.co/wtf/post/why-no-ads That sounds like an okay business model to me. Depends what features will be paid and which will be free, but given the motivation behind creating the site in the first place, it'll probably be reasonable.

huhtenberg 12y ago
> That sounds like an okay business model to me. It most likely won't work. They have recurrent expenses associated with running a service, but they plan to support it with one-time fees. This has an absolutely uncertain scalability profile. At some point their existing user base will get all the features they need and stop paying, meaning that they will need to rely on acquiring new users for revenue, which in turn will lead to higher expenses. And this starts to look as a classic pyramid scheme to me (without even considering things like salaries and dividends). Alternatively they can try harder to entice people to buy into the features, but this would mean artificially restricting functionality, castrating the free feature set, etc. I guess if they got enough momentum, they can get away with it, but in the end it's not that much better than an ad-based model.

adventured 12y ago

Scroll down, scroll up, then try hitting back to leave the site. One of the most annoying things you can ever do to me as a user.

johnchristopher 12y ago

> 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. Cool, where is the (open)-source ?

jejacks0n 12y ago
I'm a developer at Modeset, we have some open source, and try to contribute back whenever possible and time permits. If you specifically mean code for the ello.co product, there will likely be things that come out of it over time -- it's a pretty hard business model to open source stuff that you haven't completed yet. https://github.com/modeset/teaspoon https://github.com/modeset/teaspoon for instance.
- johnchristopher 12y ago
  Ah, I have a better outlook on the meaning of the statement I quoted now, thank you (sorry for the harsh one-liner).

arb99 12y ago

1) Who cares about ads on Facebook? They are not giant ads, or popunders or whatever. Sometimes they are relevant. The FB page 'ads' (that say they are sponsored) can be very relevant sometimes. People care more about things like privacy, and how easy it is to share things ('statuses' / photos / videos) with certain people. 2) The design (no offense to whoever made it) is a bit weird. Monospaced font? 3) The part where you click on the arrow (on the right of the page). It isn't clear what that is about. It is 'invite only' but they want you to submit a photo? (https://www.dropbox.com/s/wx88cyg0lh3u5j8/Screenshot%202014-09-21%2013.06.18.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/wx88cyg0lh3u5j8/Screenshot%202014-...) 4) and the profiles do look (again no offense) like a crappy tumblr blog (with a touch of instagram, which IMO isn't really a social network (no messaging, it is just a fancy photo gallery site. No one would call flickr a social networking site). Maybe thats the kind of audience they are going after... but it looks a bit amateurish. Whereas facebook, linkedin, even twitter all look a lot more fine tuned. 5) But profiles seem to be able to have direct outgoing links (no nofollow, which will encourage spam a little bit), so if it wasn't invite only it would get filled up with spam quickly.

lovamova 12y ago

Better alternative than Ello at http://sublevel.net/ http://sublevel.net/ which is already a few months old.

czottmann 12y ago

If I understand it completely, they're trying to become a centralized blend of Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook, and they have no real idea how to make money except accepting tips for infrequently introduced features. I wish them good luck but I have major doubts. Personally, I think I'll stick with #pants, a light-weight blogging engine coming with a fully decentralized social network built-in. It's free, fully open-source, and embraces the principles of the IndieWeb movement, which I think is a great idea. http://pants.social/vkk764 http://pants.social/vkk764 Full disclosure: built by my best friend. Other than that, I'm unbiased.

mofo 12y ago

https://ello.co/budnitz/post/cwGa3WXn4xz3zUsxcwCouQ https://ello.co/budnitz/post/cwGa3WXn4xz3zUsxcwCouQ

mikeyla85 12y ago

Here's a post I wrote that encapuslates a lot of these responses: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-morgenstern/ello-isnt-going-to-work-s_b_5879942.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-morgenstern/ello-isnt-...

faenvie 12y ago

I find it amazing, how some of you "experts" judge without deeper knowledge. A good part of you without even taking a look. The comments on the bycicles are downright stupid ignorance. I am not sure about ello myself, but it seems worth a try for me as a non-facebook-user. Esp. because of the things statet in ellos manifesto. i maybe able to judge in a few weeks. I would have apprecheated, if ello comes from europe or southamerika because people outside the US (i live in germany) are fed up with the "american-way" of running things, which facebook is an characteristical case for.

faenvie 12y ago

NicoleToland 12y ago

While searching for new social networks, I came across an app called Groopie. I'm still trying to figure out how to use it but you can record videos with your friends. You ping them to record. After they are done recording, their footage will get uploaded to your phone in seconds, then you can edit and blend the two to create one video. Seems like they are on to something!

webulator 12y ago

It's not secure or encrypted, they see everything you do and so therefor so can others. A next gen mobile app called Kover is in beta in the apple AppStore. It's completely encrypted and works either facebook and Twitter even.