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Ello: You are not a product.
- xngzng 12y agoCurious to know the business model. How do they sustain?
- austinl 12y agoFrom Ello's about page, "Ello is completely free to use. We occasionally offer special features to our users. If we create a special feature that you really like, you may choose to support Ello by paying a very small amount of money to add that feature to your Ello account. You never have to pay anything, and you can keep using Ello forever, for free. By choosing to buy a feature now and then for a very small amount of money you support our work and help us make Ello better and better." https://ello.co/wtf/post/about-ello https://ello.co/wtf/post/about-ello Edit: Whether or not that will actually sustain them, I suppose we'll find out.
- eps 12y agoYeah. That's not really a business model though, more of a pipe dream. You cannot support a service with one-time "very small" optional charges. Unless, of course, you start to twist users arms, in which case these charges stop being optional.
- benzoate 12y agoOptional charges seem to work pretty well for Wikipedia. Although who knows how well that will transfer to a social network.
- dataminded 12y ago$5 will buy a full month of server time on a modern cloud host. I imagine that if they can extract that much out of a user, they can make it go a very long way. This is especially true if the optional charges include things that consume large amounts of disk or bandwidth (video/pictures and associated long-term retention).
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago$5 a month out of each and every user? Good luck with that - it would put them over Google and MASSIVELY beyond Twitter and Facebook (both in single figures annually).
- shashashasha 12y agoExactly. Tumblr couldn't put money together with the themes people were buying, even though that was pretty lively.
- cstross 12y agoTheir best recruiting sergeant right now is Facebook. (And, to a much lesser extent, G+.) FB's use of social engineering to induce personal disclosure, and their abuse of personal content for marketing, has sensitized a proportion of their customer base who want social media but don't want to be advertised at: the sort of folks who paid for the ad-free premium version of Livejournal, back before LJ gave up on the anglophone web and turned into a Russo-centric system. Ello looks like positioning as a logical sanctuary for privacy-savvy social media users. I suspect their long term plan is that they will start charging, eventually ... but not until they have enough users to be cash-flow viable.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y agoPeople have been moaning about Facebook's attitude to privacy for years and it's not stopped their growth of users, usage and revenue. The reality is that for most users this isn't a big issue - they don't understand it or don't care. Of course people don't want to be advertised at but by and large they're not willing to pay what it costs not to be advertised at so they put up with it.
- cstross 12y agomoaning about Facebook's attitude to privacy for years and it's not stopped their growth Has it? I rather thought their growth curve had peaked and in some countries FB usage is falling. In particular, at least here in the UK, kids are allegedly abandoning FB for other messaging systems because their parents have finally figured out how to use it to keep tabs on them. (And I for one no longer update my FB, precisely because their attitude towards monetization is so obnoxious. Meanwhile, I do continue to use a paid-for-with-real-money accounts on two other social networks that have rather more respect for their users.)
- anamax 12y ago> Has it? I rather thought their growth curve had peaked and in some countries FB usage is falling. In particular, at least here in the UK, kids are allegedly abandoning FB for other messaging systems because their parents have finally figured out how to use it to keep tabs on them. I don't know about falling usage, but facebook demographics are changing. They're losing "eyeballs" that don't have much money and are picking up eyeballs that do. I suspect that they're willing to make that trade.
- kungfooguru 12y agoClassic. It is just free! Only charging (once) to add "special features". Curious what their cost projections are that they think this will work...
- mkr-hn 12y agoHow much of the cost of a Facebook or Twitter is because of resource-heavy data mining? Ello doesn't have much data to mine beyond what you'd find in a typical early 2000s perl guestbook script.
- kungfooguru 12y agoStorage and bandwidth is still a huge cost.
- diminish 12y agoIt is just free., but what is it? Here: > Ello is a simple, beautiful, and ad-free social network created by a small group of artists and designers.
- mkr-hn 12y agoSomeone compared it to Livejournal. I never used it, but no one complained about the comparison, so it might be apt.
- TarpitCarnivore 12y agoLivejournal/Tumblr sounds right to me. I don't see how this will be sustainable though.
- Mithaldu 12y agoBroken in Opera 12, astonishingly badly. Literally no way to contact anyone of their team in any way (email, twitter) but through ello itself. Edit: It was pointed out that there is an email adress, though a very skillfully hidden one.
- cjslep 12y agoOn Chrome, the back button wouldn't take me back here to make this comment - it kept switching between the first two items in their list.
- amirmc 12y ago> Literally no way to contact anyone of their team in any way (email, twitter) but through ello itself. From the FAQ (https://ello.co/wtf/post/faq https://ello.co/wtf/post/faq) "How do I contact Ello? Ello is run by a small team of real people who are very busy building Ello, so we ask that you only contact us if you can't find help elsewhere. If you are having a serious problem, please send an email to hello@ello.co. We'll get back to you as fast as we can. Forgive any slow replies. We're busy working on Ello!"
- Mithaldu 12y agoYou're right i missed that. It was hidden too well. Amusingly it doesn't help either. Sending mail to that results in a google-ish auto-response that virtually says "yeah you're gonna be really lucky if we read this at all, and don't even think about getting a response".
- 12y ago
- adrianlmm 12y agoI automatically reject everything that needs an invitation to join, no offence.
- mkr-hn 12y agoThey gave me ample invites, but I'm limiting them to the few friends I think would be interested. And my circle isn't exactly elite or affluent.
- adrianlmm 12y agoThe invite model worked well with GMail, because once you joined to it you could contact any one, after all, is just mail. But with social networks it doesn't work the same, If you need to send invites, explain to them what is axactly an invite, then explain to them how to send invite if they want to tell their friends, it is to much work just to join.
- mkr-hn 12y agoThe number of Facebook app invites I get daily tells me the average social network user understands the concept of invites. It's another step to get them to sign up for a social network, but I've already had people asking me for invites, and they follow through to the signup.
- adrianlmm 12y agoIn your case, but in mine, my circle of friends are just computer casual users, and Facebook invites are not mandatory to join, you can go to www.facebook.com and join there, no invite required, you can tell your Friends to go there and join and not to "hey, waith till I send you an invite", and that's another issue.
- aharonovich 12y agoWould love an invite, aharonovich(at)gmail, thanks :-)
- 12y ago
- shashashasha 12y agoEllo looks like it raised a seed round from Fresh Tracks Capital in Vermont: "Ello.co is a beautiful, simple & transparent ad-free social network. Ello is designed with the end user in mind, not advertisers, promising “You are not a product”. The site is a collaboration between Paul Budnitz, the graphic design lab Berger & Föhr, and the technologists at Mode Set." http://www.freshtrackscap.com/fund-iii-companies/Ello http://www.freshtrackscap.com/fund-iii-companies/Ello Does anyone know any more about Fresh Tracks?
- jlark777 12y agoIt looks to be a small VC firm founded in Vermont. I don't recognize the players off-hand but I do recognize the organizations they're affiliated with. Vermont has a very small, active (activist, even) business community...they tend to like to grow things at home.
- kolev 12y agoI'm sorry, but the UI is so confusing and clunky, it does not appeal to me. Plus, if we don't want ads, there's alpha.app.net - scalable, has a powerful API, actively developed, and embraced by many of us already. They just need to rebrand as this whole subdomain/alpha thing bothers.
- opendais 12y agoEh, http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-union/ http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-union/ I'm not sure app.net can be considered a viable long term solution.
- freehunter 12y agoIt would be if people signed up for it and used it. What does Ello offer than App.net doesn't?
- kolev 12y agoSame would apply to Ello. If not enough people buy the premium features, it will collapse. Ads on websites are not because developers want to overwhelm people with ads and sell data, it's to keep the lights on when most users just want a free ride.
- opendais 12y agoMy point is, it tried and failed to make enough to pay for FTEs. Ello might have runway to try for awhile.
- kolev 12y agoSad to hear that. Not sure how I've missed this. I'm a paying customer since day 1, so, I've done as much as I could to help the project.
- opendais 12y agoLife. At least it'll continue to exist in some form.
- higherpurpose 12y ago* This only applies until Facebook buys us for $5 billion. After that all bets are off, and you may become the product again.
- highwind 12y agoUgh... just scrolling through that page adds TON of baggage in the browser history. So much for the back button. If I didn't click a link or a button, don't add things to history. Please.
- podgib 12y agoI love it how so many websites with terrible UI proudly proclaim that they are 'beautiful'.
- freehunter 12y agoIt's like a good-looking person with a terrible personality. Beautiful, but you wouldn't want to live with them.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- general_failure 12y agoI don't know how to say this. DO NOT VISIT. It hijacks your back button and I had to close the tab. chrome on mac
- computerjunkie 12y agoI can confirm its on Firefox too. Having freedom to go back is one of the important things about a user interface.
- rcconf 12y agoIf you scroll down the page and then hit the back button in the browser; you're in an infinite loop on the ello.co website. Highly annoying is an understatement.
- alphadevx 12y agoNavigation kills the back button :-(
- Tyrannosaurs 12y agoAd free and with no data mining like facebook and twitter used to be? Things start well, but things change, and sadly I see no reason why history won't repeat itself. Goodwill doesn't pay for hosting or bandwidth and most social network users simply aren't willing to pay enough out of their own pocket, particularly not when there are free alternatives.
- bitJericho 12y agoBroken on my work pc. Guess I can't use it at work... guess I can be productive instead. Not sure how they can stay in business if they don't charge and they don't advertise.
- ser_ocelot 12y agoI've been wondering about alternatives to Twitter as Twitter slowly circles the shit-drain as they try to copy Facebook. Will wait and see about Ello. Have to say, websites with egregious javascript can be so annoying.
- latitude 12y agoYou never have to pay anything, and you can keep using Ello forever, for free. By choosing to buy a feature now and then for a very small amount of money you support our work and help us make Ello better and better. This is way too generous and altruistic to be practical. They obviously mean well, but this is effectively a donation-based model and it very rarely works in practice. What I think they should do is to offer personal accounts for free and charge for enterprise presence. I know a handful of people who use Facebook and Twitter in read-only mode and who follow just the companies. They effectively use social networks as a news feed of product updates, coupons, deals, discounts, etc. Moreover, they explicitly seek out the companies and follow them. If you think about it, it's an insane arrangement - you have people opting in to hear to what you have to say. This is valuable, this is something worth paying for and it keeps the network free for the individuals.
- onli 12y agoOk, i see the appeal. A social network that promises to be different than facebook can reach quite some people, and that will grow every time there is something perceived as being wrong with facebook. On the other hand, they also claim to be beautiful. And I really don't think so. It is different, that makes it nice. But black on grey with grey typewriter font, retro-boxes and favicon-sized avatar images mixed with scroll-indicators from the latest trend - that is a mess. But at least they are not a 0815-modern website, designwise, maybe they can reach somethin nice with the approach.
- jdeisenberg 12y agoI'd prefer to go with a distributed social network, of which there are many (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_prot...), but none seems to have developed a great deal of traction.
- mkr-hn 12y agoThey'll continue to not gain traction until someone tries to figure out why. I ran into roadblocks trying to interact with people on different sites. I'm not sure exactly how to overcome them, but I guess it's something like an OpenID sign-in. I never bothered since I had other networks to try out. This is probably why ello is gaining traction where app.net and similar didn't. You make an account, and there's no counterintuitive steps--relative to dominant social networks--to connecting with other people.
- onewaystreet 12y agoThe reason why is because most people don't want another social network. The problem that Diaspora, app.net and Ello are trying to solve is not actually seen as a problem by most people.
- cookingrobot 12y agoYesterday my Facebook newsfeed blew up with non-tech friends posting about Ello. No-one is signing up because it works better, they just all want out of Facebook. I don't know if Ello will take off, but there is definitely a massive demand for "anything but Facebook".
- onewaystreet 12y agoAnd how many are still using Facebook today?
- EC1 12y agoAll of them, minus that one guy who likes to be contrarian.
- thu 12y agoInvite only. The first profile I see on their homepage is https://ello.co/bitchesonbicycles https://ello.co/bitchesonbicycles with 2392 followers. I guess I don't want to be invited.
- hanley 12y agoPlease edit that link and put NSFW tags. Thanks.
- Fuzzwah 12y agoI remember a time, back in my QuakeWorld addict days, when I use to read .plan file updates. Are there any technical reasons why the old finger / .plan system couldn't be revived to replace facebook, twitter, etc, with an open and simple social network?
- cbd1984 12y ago> Are there any technical reasons why the old finger / .plan system couldn't be revived to replace facebook, twitter, etc, with an open and simple social network? People have tried that and failed. The technical reason appears to be "UI/UX/average person/etc. issues", whatever you want to call them these days. Average social network users seem to want a unified system which distributed platforms have a hard time providing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network
- williamcotton 12y agoUnified system.... distributed platform... cough blockchain cough
- NicoleToland 12y agoWhile 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!
- thrush 12y agoWhat makes me bullish on ello is that it seems like there is an incredible team behind it. - Paul Bundtz - Founder of Kidrobot - Berger and Fohr - Art Design Studio - Mode Set - Agile Software Consultancy All these representatives would be successful on their own. It seems like they're combing forces for something BIG