Battle of the Social Networking Sites: Can Ello triumph over Facebook?

Meet Ello. The social network with a totally different manifesto: no data-mining, no ads and no algorithm that makes decisions about what you need to see on your feed. No turning users into products as well.

Simple and uncluttered, Ello is the exact opposite of Facebook. Initially launched in the summer of 2013 exclusively to 90 people, the word on the new network spread and soon enough, everyone joined the bandwagon. Since then, the site has been getting a thousand new users per hour when it was re-launched last August 7, 2014.

Once you sign up and hit agree after reading the manifesto, you’ll be among the thousands of people on the waiting list for an invitation. If you click disagree, the site will redirect you to Facebook’s privacy page.

Learn about this new social network and why more and more users are jumping on board. Here are some fast facts:

Hybrid between Twitter & Tumblr

Considered as the anti-Facebook, Ello is a hybrid between Twitter and Tumblr. It lets you use @mention. Those mentions show up on your profile as well as on your friends’ feed. It is also similar to Tumblr that lets you upload hi-res photos as well as short & long-written posts.

Strict Filtering

Ello offers strict filtering in its news feed. You can filter posts in two ways: Noise and Friends. In this way, you can quickly scroll through the content of your interest. When you’ve marked someone as Friend, you will be alerted with that person’s update. However, if you mark someone as Noise, you won’t see that person’s posts on your news feed.

Like Button

Like buttons in Facebook are used as a way to gather data on users’ interest. With likes, Facebook can easily collect information to improve user experience. However, this does not apply to Ello. The site provides a love button which will save posts for later reading.

Use of Pseudonyms

Facebook recently cracked down people who won’t use their real names. Members from the LGBT community were discouraged with this policy as most of them prefer to keep their birth names private. Fortunately, Facebook changed this policy after receiving a huge backlash.

Ello on the otherhand was designed to rival Faceook’s policy that forces you to display your real name. The site lets you use pseudonyms that suit your fancy.

GIFs Light Up Your Ello Screen

Apart from uploading hi-res photos, the site also gives users the opportunity to post animated GIFs. So GIF-makers and lovers, here’s your chance to light up your Ello screen and have fun with animated GIFs.

With plenty of users moving to Ello, there’s no doubt that the social network will hit more than a million users once the site will launch its final version. But some are still unconvinced that Ello won’t kill Facebook. Here’s why:

Features Need Improvement

Eventhough Ello is ad-free, it has a lot of bugs since it is still in Beta. The team behind it is still working on new features like the NSFW flagging option which users can utilize when posting explicit content. NSFW content is not allowed on Ello so there would be no flagging feature yet.

Privacy Concern

Ello, which is still in its beta stage, has no privacy settings. Hence, it is not a den for private users as posts are public and user profiles are searchable. So if you want to move to Ello, think about what you want to post before hitting “upload.”

Simple Web Design and Difficulty in Locating Users

If Ello wants to speed up its subscription, the team behind it has to consider its web design. Overall, the website is overly simple. Locating friends is a bit difficult as the site’s discover tools only give you a list of suggestions of a few popular Ello users.

Furthermore, people use a pseudonym which is an advantage to some. But it could also be a drawback when locating friends since you need to ask them their usernames in case they aren’t using their birth names.

Functionality and Design of Phone App

Since apps are flooding the market, it may seem tough to keep up with the competition if your brand hasn’t launched an app. But Ello did it, only that its app needs more enhancement as it looks plain on an iPhone screen. The team says it’s still working on Android and IOS apps. But then again, the overall functionality and design of the app shouldn’t be late additions. The team should make sure that everything is put together when the app would be launched even with or without a website.

Competing with the pack is one thing for Ello to begin with. Making its name stand out from the rest is another. So what does Ello have to offer? Remember that Facebook has your whole life in it. Twitter acts as your news hive. Tumblr is your creative channel. Pinterest is your mood board. Instagram is your photo album and LinkedIn serves as your online resume.

What makes Ello a cut above the rest?

This article was contributed to us by Sarah Williams using the “Write for Us” option on our blog page. If you’re interested in contributing to our growing page click here for more details.