Ello, the social network that received a tremendous amount of media attention last year as a possible "Facebook killer" before fading out of the spotlight (like most would-be Facebook killers), has raised another $5 million in funding.
This new round of financing brings Ello's total funding to date to $11 million, and will likely again raise the question of whether a service some see as a quirky Facebook clone can ever build a serious business that would justify the many comparisons to the social networking behemoth.
However, the team at Ello say they could not care less about all that.
"We frankly don’t give a sh*t about outside expectations because those are based on comparisons to a model that we think is negative, manipulative and broken," Paul Budnitz, the serial entrepreneur behind Ello, told Mashable in an email. "The new investment gives us time to grow our way, to hire the best people, and to keep Ello free and positive and beautiful as it grows."
Ello quietly launched a beta version of its minimalist, ad-free social network targeting creatives in March 2014, and gained traction in September amid an outcry over a Facebook policy requiring users to go by their legal names. At that time, Ello was far from polished and didn't even have an app.
In the months since then, the company has grown to 26 employees who work to improve Ello's features and plan to launch a mobile app this spring.
Ello's new mobile app
Budnitz declined to provide precise user numbers, noting that Ello is still in beta.
"I can tell you that we’re in the millions now, and that about 80% of our community growth is from invitations from existing people on Ello," he said. "We’re totally focused on growing from the inside out."
Budnitz and other Ello employees have openly criticized Facebook's policy of collecting user data for marketing, while at the same claiming that they are not in fact an "anti-Facebook" and don't even consider it a competitor.
"The media created this catfight last fall — the catfight amongst social networks — positioning us as the anti-," Rene Alegria, Ello's recently hired chief marketing officer, told Mashable in an earlier interview. "That's not what we stand for ... What we're working toward is galvanizing the creative community."
It's a smaller ambition than, say, connecting the entire world as Facebook is trying to do, but that doesn't stop Ello insiders from speaking in grandiose terms. Budnitz referred to Ello in an email as a "social revolution." Mark Solon, managing partner at Techstars Ventures, which invested in the latest round, described Ello in a statement as "a company whose business will literally change the world."
For now, we're just waiting to see if Ello can literally build a business.
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."
10 things to know about Ello, the ad-free social network
From CNET
Screenshot by Sharon Profis/CNET
By now, you've probably heard of Ello, the invite-only social network garnering attention for its radical approach to social networking. Find out why the site is seeing 35,000 hourly sign-ups, and why people are so willing to join yet another social network.
Why Ello is different
Ello is the anti-Facebook, and it has no problem stating that. The bare-bones, ad-free, so-minimalist-it-hurts social network was designed in response to the many controversial Facebook policies, especially the one that forces users to display their real names.
But when you look at Ello, it might not seem that much different than other social networks. It doesn't go out of its way to use innovative approaches to organizing your friends, discovering content, or enriching your experience. Google+, for instance, introduced Circles, confusing users before they even had a chance to set up their profile.
What you get is a hybrid between Tumblr and Twitter. Like Tumblr, you can post photos and written thoughts, long or short. Like Twitter, you can @mention people, and those mentions show up on your profile, as well as theirs.
Unadorned and intentionally sparse, the users and their content are the focus, while other site elements generally go unnoticed.
The ad-free, privacy-first promise
Ello promises to uphold its proposition and remain ad-free forever. The reason goes back to Ello's philosophy -- the only way to sell ads is by harvesting user data, and the company does not intend on doing that. In fact, Ello allows users to opt out of Google Analytics tracking, and details the ways in which it anonymizes user data.
Plenty of folks are dubious, but Ello responded to the skepticism by asserting its plans to find other streams of income. In a post, its founders stated plans to offer paid feature upgrades, which could be things like data exporting or profile enhancements.
Is there a "like" button?
Nope. We looked high and low, but there's no button to be found.
Remember that the Like button was created as a streamlined way to collect data about what users are interested in. It's easier than analyzing written posts -- if a user "likes" something, Facebook can easily package that sentiment for sale.
According to this post, it sounds like Ello will be adding its own version of this feature -- a "Love" button(seriously) which will function as a way for you to save posts for later reading.
Signing up
Those who remember Gmail Beta will feel nostalgic when they find out that signing up for Ello requires an invitation. Each new users is allotted 25 invites.
The social network is supposedly attracting about 35,000 invites per hour, so your chances of getting an invitation are pretty good.
Once you've gotten a golden ticket, signing up is simple. Ello asks you to choose a username, which is also your URL. Although you should probably choose something you plan on sticking with, it's good to know that you can change this at any time. You'll also be asked to choose a display name, which you can change at any time. In the spirit of Ello, you may choose to make it entirely anonymous.
The only other required information is your e-mail address. (Compare this to Facebook's sign-up, for example, which also requires a birth date and gender.)
Customizing (or not customizing) your profile
Like every other social network, you'll get your own profile page, which can be accessed via Ello.co/(your user name). By default, this is accessible by anyone, whether or not they have an Ello account.
From your profile page, click the large circle to upload a photo. If you want it to look perfect, be sure to resize it to 340x340, or else Ello will automatically crop it. (And you probably won't like it.)
If you scroll down, you'll also see that you can upload a header image, for which the recommended size is 1,800x1,013. If you upload anything smaller or larger, Ello will do its best to make it fit. (Mine was much smaller than that, and it looks fine.)
You're almost done customizing your profile! All that's left to do is click the gear icon to the left of your profile picture, and fill in any blank fields, like a short bio or links. As long as you insert spaces, multiple links can be included.
Personal settings
Ello's profile settings are minimal, but what they lack in quantity, they make up in importance. At the bottom of your settings page, take your time to consider each option. For example, Ello uses Google Analytics, which tracks visitors and anonymizes their activity. Unlike any other major social network, Ello lets you opt out of this activity.
You may also choose to disable the Public Profile option, which prevents people who are not members of Ello from seeing your profile. Note that anyone within the network can still see your profile and posts.
Finally, there's a Delete button. When you click it, your profile will be removed from Ello. According to the Terms of Service, however, Ello retains the right to "store backups of your content, even after it is deleted or after you delete your account."
Friends vs. Noise
Your Ello "news feed" can be filtered in two ways: Friends and Noise. When you're viewing the Friends tab, you'll see complete posts from anyone you've marked as a Friend. In the Noise tab, you'll see a Pinterest-like grid of posts from people you've marked as Noise. It's designed this way so that you can quickly scroll through content you're less interested in.
You can categorize people as "Noise" or "Friend" from their profiles. When you click "Friend" on someone's profile, you are simply following their posts, not sending them a friend request. In this way, it's a lot like Twitter.
Anyone you mark as "Noise" won't be alerted of your choice. You're the only one who can see how you've categorized people.
Tip: You can toggle between the grid-style and full width-style within either filter by hitting Shift-5.
Posting and interactions
To create a post, click the black box and start typing. If you want to format your text with numbered lists, links, bold, italics, or even bullets, you can do that with markdown. Ello has a useful support page with tips on formatting. To mention a user, just add an @ symbol to the beginning of their username, and the post will appear on their page.
You can't post videos (at least for now), but you can upload photos by clicking the double window icon just below the gray text box. Alternative, just drag a JPG, GIF, animated GIF or PNG file directly onto the black box. Photos are compressed but not resized, so don't expect uniformity when uploading photos of varying dimensions.
So far, the posting process has been a little glitchy. I've uploaded photos that disappeared upon hitting "Post," although I've never lost written content. Also, Ello will not warn you when you delete a post. Not a surprising scenario when you consider Ello is run by a handful of people and is still in beta.
Searching Ello
On the Discover page (also accessible from the left sidebar), there's a search field at the top. Right now, it doesn't work. You'll probably end up being able to use it to find users or content.
Features
Ello is in beta, so expect a lot of bugs. Also expect to feel deprived of a lot of features, like user blocking or a mobile app. The company has a list of current and upcoming features you can check out here.
One in particular worth noting is the NSFW flagging option, which users can utilize when posting explicit content. Until that flagging feature is released, NSFW content is not allowed on Ello.
And then there's the Ello Facemaker tool. It doesn't seem to be working right now, but when it functions, it can be used to paste the Ello logo on your face, hiding your identity and becoming one with the Elloans.
By now, you've probably heard something about Ello, the ad-free, invite-only, independent social network that has seemingly gone viral over the last week.
The ad-free social network has quickly — and somewhat inexplicably — gained a reputation for being the "anti-Facebook." Which is odd, because new users tend to boast on Facebook about having scored an invite to the service.
While it's not clear what's behind the site's sudden surge in popularity (it launched in March to little fanfare), several reports have linked the rise of Ello to the recent firestorm caused by Facebook's so-called real name policy.
Facebook's policy, which requires all users to go by their legal name on the social network, has been in place for some time — but came under fire earlier this month as several drag performers and LGBT activists spoke out after being locked out of their accounts for not using their legal names.
The furor resulted in several San Francisco city officials getting involved — and, eventually, a meeting at Facebook HQ. But though Facebook agreed to temporarily give individuals affected by the policy back their accounts, the social network has so far not changed their rules.
This has apparently caused some in the LGBT community to move to Ello, which allows users to identify themselves by any name they want.
"We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment," Ello'smanifesto proclaims. "Not a tool to deceive, coerce, and manipulate — but a place to connect, create, and celebrate life. You are not a product."
The site itself is like a cross between Twitter and Tumblr though with more limited features. Users can post status updates, photos and GIFs and comment on their friends' posts. There is a search tool to find the people you know though it's been buggy and unreliable in our testing.
The creators have a long list of new features, including mobile apps and more privacy settings, they say are in the works. But the timing of those updates is unclear.
Meanwhile, the sudden popularity has fueled massive interest in the fledgling social network. Reports have surfaced claiming Ello is receiving anywhere from 4,000 to more than 30,000 requests an hour.
While these numbers have been reported in a number of publications, it doesn't appear they have been independently verified. Still, the network apparently received so many requests that it had to temporarily limit users' abilities to send them Thursday.
The site's more enterprising users are taking advantage of the situation — as dozens of beta invites have cropped up on eBay, with prices ranging anywhere from $5 to $150.
It's impossible to say whether Ello is the next big thing or just another passing fad — but it has definitely succeeded in getting the Internet's attention.
