Say Hello to Ello: The Tidy Anti-Facebook

In the blink of an eye, a new social network has appeared as if from nowhere.

Say Hello to Ello.

What put Ello on the map?

Facebook did.

Facebook told drag queens to use their legal names or risk losing their profiles.

The great gay Facebook exodus followed.

Ello EXPLODED.

Since the sudden Facebook exodus to Ello:

? requests to join went from 4,000 to 35,000+ per hour,

? Twitter exploded with desperate pleas for invites,

? eBay capitalized on the demand with a deluge of invite listings,

? and Ello became one of the hottest trends on Google search.

What the Ell is Ello?

Ello is like a Twitter/Tumblr hybrid minus color and font choices.

It's shiny and new, different and, possibly, cool.

Should that trump being intuitive and user-friendly? You tell me.

Does Ello refer to itself as the “anti-Facebook”?

When Ello CEO Paul Budnitz was asked that question in his interview with Re/Code, his response was Ello isn’t “really anti-anything.”

Then again, he also said: “We don’t actually consider Facebook a social network. We think of it as an advertising platform.”

But Ello set-up speaks a thousand words on the subject.

The company manifesto heroically tells newcomers “You are not a product” and invites you to Agree/Disagree. If you agree, you get a sign-up for Ello, and if you disagree, it sends you to Facebook.

What else does Paul Budnitz say about Ello's unlike-Facebook-ness?

Again, from his interview with Re/Code:

[Other social networks] are so cluttered and full of ads and I can’t find my friends anymore and we keep seeing these boosted posts and for some reason Facebook’s decided I’m like a middle-aged woman and I’ve got pantyhose ads.

...it was so nice to have a social network that was really a social network and nothing else.

We are not here to compete with Facebook. We don’t actually consider Facebook a social network. We think of it as an advertising platform. We’re doing our own thing.

Facebook really feels like a utility. I think Zuckerberg said once that he wanted to sign up everybody in the world on Facebook. That’s not our goal. We just want to make a nice community.

In other words, Ello was indeed founded as an alternative to Facebook — and it’s working, at least for now.

Personally, it feels more like MySpace to me... Might be because this is one of the first profiles I saw on Ello:

So, Is Ello the Beanie Baby of Social Networks Then?

Sure, their anti-ad stance makes them look very soft and cuddly, but Ello does have a business plan.

What's the plan?

Ello is very simple and minimalistic on purpose.

In the future, if you would like to enhance your Ello experience by adding specific features, you'll be able to purchase them just like you would buy an app in the App Store for a couple bucks.

What features are we talking about?

Paul Budnitz gives an example of controlling multiple accounts from a single login. To enable that, that is to add another account or username to your login account, Ello would charge a small fee - we don’t know how much at the moment.

I think nowadays people need to use something and fall in love with it and then say, ‘Okay, I can support that.’ ~ Paul Budnitz

And what did Mark Zuckerberg have to say about Ello?

(needless to say, this was a fake Mark Zuckerberg - the profile has been deleted by Ello Team. HT for the screenshot Martin Beck)

Let's Talk Ello Numbers

So far, Ello hasn't released any user numbers - it's much more beneficial and fun to let people assume it was blowing up through the roof, isn't it?

Thankfully, a business intelligence company RJMetrics has done a bit of research and published a few interesting stats on Ello’s users and their behaviors on the site.

Here are a few highlights, based on a sample size of almost 160,000 Ello users:

• 37% of Ello users are female
• 36% of Ello users have never posted
• 27% of Ello users have posted more than three times
• 6 days after signup, 25% of users are still active

RJMetrics has also compared Ello’s performance against two of their most-loved platforms, Twitter and Instagram, plus a brand new app that launched earlier this year, Jelly.

Here's what they learned:

Looks like Ello just might have a future beyond the frenzy of signups after all.

So, Should You Care about Ello?

A couple of weeks ago, few had heard of Ello.

Then:

? September 24th, BetaBeat referred to Ello as “the mysterious social network”.

? September 25th, TechCrunch declared that Ello was “blowing up”.

? September 26th, The Daily Beast said “the service’s problems far outweigh the benefits”.

? September 28th, Ello experienced its first DDoS attack.

? September 29th, The Washington Post called Ello “hopelessly, irredeemably naive”.

(from RJMetrics post)

So should YOU care about Ello?

I bet you'd love for me to tell you one way or another, wouldn't you?

I understand. You are barely keeping your head above the water as is. There's no 'catching up' in sight. Coffee is the only thing that motivates you to drag your feet out of bed in the morning.

However, 'Should I care about Ello?' might be the wrong question to ask.

No one knows what future holds for Ello.

However, we DO have a good idea of what's going on on Ello today.

From +Mark Traphagen's The Early Adopter's Creed:

I learned something from my experience with Google+. If you're going to be an early adopter, and if you want to have any chance at reaping the (potential) rewards early adoption can bring, you've got to not only leap in early, but leap with both feet.

And here's my favorite take on 'why Ello' from +Thomas Hanna of BlogPhoto.tv's comment on this Google+ post - it's so good, I have to give it to you in its entirety.

I think Ello is a great investment right now that will pay off even if it falls flat.

Right now, the Ello community is fairly small. It is made up almost exclusively of those who jump into potential social media startups as early adopters.

This means that Ello is heavily populated by leaders. Many of these leaders are people with significant platforms that I would not be able to build relationships with on any other social platform because I would be drowned out by the sheer size of their following.

But right now, they're exploring Ello and the background noise is almost nil.

Social Media - on any platform - is about relationships. Relationships cross platforms. If I spend 6 months investing my time building relationships on Ello and the entire platform shuts down, so what? Those relationships will still exist on other platforms. Right now, Ello provides the opportunity to build those relationships in ways that do not exist anywhere else.

So I don't see the "roll of the dice." As far as I can tell, Ello allows for two possibilities: you can win, or you can win big.

Bottom line is - you decide.

But whatever you decide, do it wholeheartedly.

Either sit on the sidelines waiting to see what future holds for Ello or jump in now with both feet.

There's no middle ground. There shouldn't be.

Only then you'll truly know if Ello works for you.

Now What?

Assuming missing a chance to be at the ground level of something potentially big is not your style, your first hurdle is to get an Ello invite.

(Ello is still in invitation-only beta mode at the moment.)

Your best bet of getting one is to ask around. Check it with your friends who are already on Ello. Look for invites on Twitter or Facebook.

Then what?

Watch. Experiment. Share. Friend people you already know. Mingle with interesting strangers. Get confused. Have aha! moments. Share what you've learned. Get lost. Get found.

Practical How-To's to Help You with Ello

? Learn how to use Ello: The Complete Guide to the Ad Free Social Network - at StoneTemple.com

? Read Ello's official Ello Tips.

? Keep this Ello cheat sheet handy (download it as PDF at GreenMellenMedia.com) (ht Kimberly Brink-Castleberry)

? Follow people who can help you learn more about Ello:

• Kimberly Brink-Castleberry
• Mark Traphagen
• Evo Terra
• Eli Fennell
• Lars Skjoldby
• Robert Scoble
• Robert Ramirez

And yes, of course:

• Ana Hoffman

(I'll be adding more to this list as I find them - feel free to make suggestions in the comments).

I wouldn't recommend Google's Matt Cutts though, he won't be of much help on Ello apparently:

You can also connect with Ello founders at the following accounts:

• @budnitz
• @budnitzbicycles
• @bergerfohr
• @todd
• @lucian
• @gv
• @mk
• @jayzes
• @cacheflowe

Other useful accounts to follow:

• Ello WTF
• Ello

Bottom Line

Is Ello really the anti-Facebook? Who cares.

As long as it sucks less than Facebook, it'll seal the deal for most of its users.

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About Ana Hoffman: 90% of your problems can be solved by smart marketing. Solving the other 10% just requires good procrastination skills. Can't help you with the latter, but I do know a thing or two about smart marketing. Want me to prove it? Get my free "Mommy, Where Does Traffic Come From?" traffic report and we'll go from there.