Dear Ello Everyone,
Starting today, Ello has begun an ad campaign on Facebook that points out problems with ads and data mining on social networks.
To say this another way: just for fun, we’re taking out ads that point out the problems with ads!!
We decided to use Facebook’s powerful ad targeting tools to target users by real name, email, age, sex, hometown, buying habits, political affiliation, religion, sexual preference, and even by scanning personal messages — to place highly customized ads that point this out to the people that see them.
The ads have dynamic taglines such as “They told us you’re single in NYC” and “We paid for you to see this ad,” along with customized images related to user interests and browsing habits.
Sample ads are posted above. Many feature artwork created by artists on Ello (with their permission, of course)!
We created Ello because we’d become fed up with the other big social networks. Ads were cluttering our streams, we were missing posts by our friends, and having so much data collected on us just felt creepy. Many of us felt obligated to use those other networks, but we weren’t enjoying them as much. We were missing love, connection and trust.
So we created our own!
On Ello, it’s way more fun to connect and be inspired because you’re not a product being bought and sold.
On Ello, you control what you share. You will never be forced to enter private personal information about yourself that’s sold to the highest bidder.
On Ello, your streams are chronological. There are no manipulative algorithms or boosted posts controlling the prioritization of paid content over posts by your friends.
Since the Ello iOS App launch last week (Android coming later this year!) we’re excited to watch Ello grow.
Please help us bring more awesome people to Ello. Share the images above. Invite your friends (the new Ello App lets you find friends using your contact list! Woo!). And let everyone know about all the positivity and awesomeness on Ello.
We’re so glad you’re here!
Love,
Paul
