The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Ello?
“Simple, beautiful and ad-free”
Ello is an ad-free social media network with a simple and uncluttered interface.
It began as a response by a small group of artists and programmers against the increasing bombardment of advertising and personal details being sold for capital gain on the other main social media networks.
When compared to the other social media platforms, it is most similar in look and feel to that of Tumblr and Twitter. The features are also familiar; Comment, Follow, Unfollow and @Mentions.
One of the appeals of Ello is that it allows a more personal element to Social Media allowing users to choose any username they want, unlike Facebook where users have to give a real name. (Facebook enforced this rule in the Summer of 2014 causing uproar to the American Gay community and entertainment industries where many profiles are that of people with ‘stage names’).
Using Ello
The self-explanatory drag and drop format allows you to set up a profile picture and header image with the recommended size specifications noted in the space itself. The interface is intuitive; a fluid grid layout with a lot of white space – you can tell it was created by Artists and Web Developers!
Its simple to navigate and if at any time you want to read up more about how to use it you can scroll to the bottom right at click the heading; ‘WTF’.
From looking around at the user profiles, you get the sense that this social media network is a great space for people to display their personal creativity; The platform places a large focus on sharing images, video and written content created by its users – all media had to be owned or created by its owners.
To find friends and people to follow you use the search bar and when finding friends you might like you simply ‘drag’ the thumbnail to your ‘Friends’ or ‘Noise’ areas. Friends being of course people you share reciprocal content with and Noise being the space where you are able to see everyones activity at a glance.
How Are Businesses Using Ello?
Though Ello holds an anti-commercial stance, it has no policy against business accounts.
There are a few examples of businesses who have embraced the new social media network; Penguin Books and a fair few small retail brands such as the company, Cheap Monday which is owned by H&M and even Ello’s Founder, Paul Budnitz has an account for his Bicycle business.
If you know who your target audience are; ie Early adopters, creatives, US market then it could be worth having brand presence on Ello but be aware that you may need to think differently about the type of content you post on here compared to say Facebook and Google+. People who have joined Ello have joined to not be bombarded by ads and sales pitches so go for the simple approach by taking a nice image of the product and captioning it then post.
The Future For Ello
We have yet to see how this network develops worldwide but it has just hit over a million users worldwide and has also managed to raise a further $5.5 Million in funding (TechCrunch 2014).
In terms of Social Advertising, Ello has made a promise to always be ad-free and never sell the company on to someone who would use the platform to advertise, they also promise never to sell user data as they believe that they have ‘products and features that users would be willing to pay for’.
At the time of writing, The Company is now on Beta Version 2 with private messaging now enabled for users and the network rolled out a Mobile app version available for iOs and Android.
Are you using Ello? We would love to hear how you’re finding using the platform and what your think of it - Tweet us @CarvillCreative or drop us a comment below.