The design crowd: Ello co-founder Paul Budnitz. Photo: Supplied
Facebook is unlikely to meet the same fate as its one-time rival MySpace despite the arrival of a new social media network that is seducing some users away with the promise of no advertising, analysts and media buyers say.
Ello, which touts itself as everything that Facebook is not, is reportedly receiving up to 31,000 requests an hour from people wanting to join the site. The new network is banking on luring disenchanted Facebook users, declaring that it is "simple, beautiful and ad-free".
Its arrival has prompted inevitable questions about Facebook's continued dominance of social media. According to Roy Morgan research, Facebook had just over 11 million visitors aged 14 years in the past week, compared with Twitter's 2 million. Facebook itself says it has a monthly average of about 13 million users in Australia, growing at about 1 million a year since 2009.
Facebook is famous for crushing MySpace, which Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation bought in 2005 for $580m, by pilfering its users with a more intuitive and feature-rich service.
But despite an outcry among some users about invasive advertising on Facebook, media analyst Steve Allen at Fushion Strategy believes the network will not become the next MySpace.
"I don't think Facebook is likely to be challenged and toppled … because you need to build a better mousetrap and I don't think what they [Ello] are offering is distinctly better," he said.
"To discard or disband what you have been doing for some time and suddenly move somewhere else is a major undertaking and therefore there might be some inertia."
Ello is still in beta mode and its website says it is "inviting new users in small groups as we roll out new features".
"If too many people join at once, the Ello servers will melt down," Ello says in an email to people wanting to join its platform.
"Please be patient, and don't worry. You'll receive an Ello invite as soon as possible".
John Miskelly, head of digital at Group M, said there was some anecdotal evidence that some young people were turning away from Facebook.
But he said these were small numbers and they were turning to more niche players like Ello, which he said would have a maximum of 50,000 to 100,000 users.
"At the end of the day, advertising is about reaching millions and millions of people," Mr Miskelly said.
"These little sites create some niche targeting but will never generate the mass scale to threaten or really harm or worry Facebook."
Mr Miskelly said Facebook was continuing to grow its user base and advertisers had increased their spend on the social network site by about 50 per cent in the past year. A Facebook spokeswoman declined to confirm the advertising spend figures.
"Year-on-year Facebook has grown its reach about 5 per cent," Mr Miskelly said. "This site [Ello] doesn't even register in … the Neilsen ratings. It's a drop in the ocean compared with Facebook."
But Ello-co founder Paul Budnitz told Fairfax Media last week that "we don't really see ourselves competing with Facebook at all".
"We see Facebook is an advertising platform, not a social network."
In a "manifesto" on its homepage, Ello adds that "your social network is owned by advertisers" and "you are not a product".
"We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate - but a place to connect, create and celebrate life," the site says.
But it is advertising that has allowed Facebook - which booked a net profit of about $US1.5 billion ($A1.7 billion) last year - to continue to innovate and grow users.
The company's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, said at a Fortune Brainstorm Tech marketing dinner in New York last week that she hadn't seen Ello's site, but was used to regularly hearing about challengers and the demise of Facebook.
"Ever since I've been at Facebook, I see things all the time which are like, 'My Mom's getting on Facebook, I'm getting off.' Saturday Night Live did that skit years ago," Ms Sandberg said.
"People will continue to use Facebook if they understand that we don't tell who they are to anyone, if they understand that they have control over what they share, and if we build a great product that continues to connect.
"I think what we're really focused on is all of those things, particularly the product. What we worry about as we get bigger is, we want to innovate. And so we stay very focused on continuing to ship products."
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