Social networking lovers will now have yet another site to share their life on. Ello, a new social networking site, has been developed to compete with social networking giants like Facebook and Twitter. The Ello Social Network has been developed by a group of artists and designers. It is an ad free site for now and has applications and tools common to Facebook and Twitter.
About the Site:
You will find similarities of Ello with Facebook and Twitter. Your Ello profile will be divided in two distinct parts. Ello displays the status updates, images and other newsfeeds on the right side of the screen. On the left side it displays a grid that is the Noise section. These would display pictures of other Ello members who do not feature on your friends.
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The site also provides some tools that are displayed on the upper left side of the page. This site also supports Graphical Interchange Format or GIF, something not availed on Facebook. When you join a community within Ello social network, it gets displayed under the newsfeed. Ello gives you a chance to be discreet. Unlike Facebook, Ello does’t require the real name of the user to open an account. This has appealed to many users specially the younger generation as being anonymous on the web has its own share of advantages.
Ad Free – Really?
Ello social network is surprisingly an ad-free site. Developers are of the view that advertisements disrupt the pleasure of social networks. Hence the team decided to run the social site without the assault of advertisements. The real question however is how long Ello can stick to its policy of no-advertisement. The trends so far show us every social network turns to advertisement for revenue once they have enough users on board and engagement. From Facebook to Instagram and Pinterest this has been the prevalent industry trend. Makers have said that though it would keep most of its user accounts ad-free, it would avail paid features and services to its users. These, you will be able to use as and when required.
As more and more users signup, Ello will have to fork out more and more cash to accommodate them and enhance feature list. This would require more developers and engineers to be hired and to ensure servers don’t give up when stressed under excess load. Hence funds would be essential for the upkeep of the site. Already being touted as Anti-Facebook social site, Ello social network has already created a buzz. Even though Ello itself is ads-free, it is already advertising itself in various social networks. Founder Paul Budnitz said that the site has been adding in users every day, the number doubling after every couple of days.
User Dedicated:
Ello social network promises that it will not give out data of its customers. It also commits that it would remain ad free. It intends to keep the social site simple and not make it too complicated for the users. The developers have integrated a delete option on every user’s page. According to them, if you no longer find Ello to be interesting enough, you can quickly delete your account.
Beta Stage:
The Ello social network is at present in the beta stage. This is pretty visible by the minimal app content on the display page. You can send request for friends, post statuses and even see whom are you following. The Noise category of Ello displays pictures of various users in a grid. These images are mainly of people who do not feature in your friend list but you might know them or share similar interests.
Tough to be a member:
Access to open a new account is a bit difficult. In order to be a member of the Ello social network community you need to get invited by a user. This strict policy has slowed down the users who are eager to be members of the new social site.
You can send requests to be invited to the social network. For this you have to access the official website of Ello social network and request for an invite. Developers would send in an invite to your email address.
Ello is at present taking just the baby steps. However, with the no ads feature, it might pull in users from other social networks for whom being connected with friends and family is priority over being forced to gulp down branded content and ads.
The Tech Cult 