It looks like Ello's claim is that the problems with social networks revolve around privacy and data mining. Personally, those things aren't nearly my primary i

It looks like Ello's claim is that the problems with social networks revolve around privacy and data mining. Personally, those things aren't nearly my primary issue - my main frustration with social media is the type of content it encourages people to share, resulting in (in my experience) a platform built primarily for expressions of vanity. For me, until that changes, social media primarily exists as a personal communication mechanism via messages. In that case the network effect dominates all other features.