Yes, I've got an account there. For me, the early days of a social network are often very enjoyable -- lots of interesting people trying things out. The UI's

Yes, I've got an account there. For me, the early days of a social network are often very enjoyable -- lots of interesting people trying things out. The UI's not my favorite style and is a bit quirky but you can certainly have good conversations (at least on a computer; the mobile interface needs work). As for what's attractive about it: it's not Facebook. People are ready for something different. I noticed more and more people talking about time spent on Facebook the way they talk about time watching bad TV or eating junk food ... plus, in my experience, most people really do find Facebook's ads irritating. Plus for a chunk of people, the "real names" issue is a big deal; and this follows the stuff about Facebook's emotional manipulation experiments. Of course that doesn't mean that Ello's the answer to what people are hoping for; it's too early to tell how successful it will be. But I certainly believe they were getting 31,000 requests for invites an hour. Even if they were at level for 3 days straight at that level is only 2 million people -- a tiny portion of Facebook's english-speaking population.