The more they learn about Facebook, the more some people are turned off by the social networking site and its practices. But Ello shuns a good deal of what turns users against Facebook, promising no ads and hefty privacy compared to Mark Zuckerberg's site.
Paul Budnitz created and designed Ello, a social networking site that uses an invite-only strategy, at least for right now. Ello's exclusivity is likely the big factor driving some of the site's rising demand, but its privacy approach -- the social network vows it will never sell user data to anyone and it seeks to operate without shoving sponsored ads in front of its users' eyeballs -- is what may make users big fans in the long run.
"Virtually every other social network is run by and for advertisers," says Ello. "Behind the scenes, armies of ad salesmen and data miners track and record every move you make. Data about you is auctioned off to advertisers and data brokers. Under the guise of offering a free service, users of other social networks pay a high price in lack of privacy and intrusive advertising."
Ello was originally a private network, but demand prompted Budnitz and company to open the site up to the general public. Ello says it does collect some data from users but it employs a randomizer so that it can get the information it needs to make its site better without compromising the users' privacy.
"This information is anonymous and aggregated. Before information about you is stored on the Google servers, your IP address is stripped and anonymized," says Ello. "This means that it is very difficult for anyone (including Ello and Google) to trace the data that Google stores back to any one user. We can see how people are using Ello in general, but not what you are doing in particular."
If Ello's randomizer isn't enough, the company says users can opt out of sharing information all together. "We're cool with that" says Ello.
Some of Ello's many features include basic commenting, @-style mentions, user discovery, views per post, streaming notifications, Emoji integration, image compression, follow and unfollow. Ello says it plans to release user blocking, flagging, Soundcloud integration, private account, multimedia commenting, a notification center, a bookmarking stream, mobile apps and more.
With Facebook continuing to expanding its advertising revenue and its ability to absorb more, Ello may have come just in time for some longtime users of Zuckerberg's site.
"When a network is run for advertisers, the advertiser is really the customer," Mr. Budnitz said. "That really goes against what a social network is. When you're putting up artwork, or something you wrote or created, and there's an add for underwear, it conflicts in a violating way."
