WHAT IS ELLO?
Ello is not Facebook.
Its also not Tumblr. Or Snapchat. Or anything else. We’re building Ello.
This should be obvious, but if you look at the way some of the tech media writes about Ello there seems to be some confusion about this.
Ello is a simple, beautiful place to connect and share things we love, with no ads and no data mining. We respect freedom of speech, and we believe that you have the right to control what you see on your social network. Your connections, posts, friends, and browsing history should not be mined by advertisers who do not have your best interests at heart.
The Ello community attracts some of the world’s tops artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, motion graphic designers, gardeners, chefs — and lots of others, too. There’s even an Icelandic horse (@luebue) that posts regularly on Ello and who has thousands of followers.
Ello is positive: it’s a place where over and over, people feel free to support each other; rather than a snarky and cynical place to shut others down. The Ello community extends from the virtual to the real world, and creates opportunity. Ryan Miller from @guster wrote yesterday that the poster for his 2015 tour was created by @jeremyville, who he met on Ello. Ryan met his videographer here too.
And finally: Ello is a work in progress.
When we launched Ello Beta last fall the only thing we could do on the network was post! With just one feature we grew from 90 users to tens of thousands to millions in a few months.
Since then we've added commenting, notifications, sound & video file support, search, reposting, and much more. Coming over the next few weeks is a wholesale redesign of Ello, then #tagging, content search, loves, bookmarking, private groups, messaging — and mobile apps! All done in a very considered way that takes a little time, but is always worth the wait.
And I think this is what makes Ello most special.
When Ello is compared to Facebook, it’s like comparing a boutique clothing designer to Wal-Mart. I'm not going to get in a debate here about whether or not we need Wal-marts in the world, but we're not here to build another one. We (the Ello founders and the Ello community) are not interested in another ubiquitous cinderblock warehouse full of all the cheap junk on the Internet. We're not trying to sign up everyone in the world.
Looking at Ello through the lens of big social networks is like comparing @itsjustyes (a small boutique active on Ello) to K-Mart (not on Ello). The consideration that we put into everything we do is reflected back to us by the Ello community, which shares our ideals of quality over quantity, and positivity over negativity.
And because Ello is run for us and not advertisers, there's no censorship. On Ello you can choose to post and see NSFW content, or choose not to. Being free to respect everyone's point of view means it's up to you.
We do things a little differently here, because we’re all a little different. And if you visit Ello, and it’s not for you — that's cool, just move on.
Thank you to everyone who continues to love, use, and invite others to this independent, ad-free social network!
Lots more wonderful stuff coming.
Much love,
Paul
/ photo of @budnitz by @jk
