Why I Won’t be Joining Ello…

Not Joining Ello… yet.

Yesterday started like any other day. Americano in hand I popped my MacBook open only to find a flood of messages about something called Elo, Ello, ELO, E.L.O.

What!? The troubadours of “Don’t Bring Me Down” have reunited? Elmo changed a letter? Diaspora has rebranded… no? What then?

Well if you haven’t logged onto Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn today then you may not know that there’s a new “ad free” social network in town.

Yes you heard that right, we finally have a new social network that will allow us to connect with friends and family and, for now, it’s available by invite only. I guess that creates a sense of mystery and plays on the human need to be a part of the group. Or more accurately the desire not to be left out. Hence the many, ‘pleez, pleez, pleez send me an invite’ posts on FB. Puleeezzz people.

Squirrel…

I’m honestly shocked at the number of people that still jump on these shiny bobbles like the life changing events that they are. I shouldn’t judge though. I’ve done it myself; Ning, Diaspora, Swarm, I could go on. But I won’t be joining Ello. There are many reasons but the bottom line is;  A) I don’t have time (and neither do you);  B) I’ll wait a few months to see if it lasts while letting others test it out to see if there really is anything new, different or better. Is there any value. The interwebs are littered with malnourished social networks.

And besides, I already have so much equity in Facebook and Twitter, not to mention G+ and LinkedIn, along with somewhat lonely presences on Pinterest and Instagram, that even if Ello happens to offer something amazing (I can’t imagine now what that might be) it would be a major effort to move everything and everyone away from one and over to another.  So I’m happy to sit on the sidelines and watch. Let me know how it goes.

What I Do Like About Ello

It will get the other players (I’m looking at you Facebook) thinking about how concerned the average user is about privacy and their digital footprint – and that’s a good thing. I’m sure they’ll be watching from the sidelines as well but hopefully they take note.

Sonos on ElloPS – I’m not so sure about that “advertising free” thing. Those marketers can be tricky. >>

PSS – Ello founders got $435,000 in seed funding in January from FreshTracks Capital. Venture Capitalists generally like to get their money back, plus a little extra. You do the math…

PSSS – If you still want an invitation to join Ello you can get one here.

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5 thoughts on “Why I Won’t be Joining Ello…”

  1. I had only just heard about Ello this morning as one of my FB friends made a post about leaving Facebook for Ello citing better privacy for their posts. I did some digging around and came across the Ello Privacy Policy which made me think that Ello really isn’t all the better at privacy than Facebook. In fact its likely worse.

    Here is my favourite part from the Ello Privacy Policy https://ello.co/wtf/post/privacy

    Ello is a Public Network
    Ello is a platform built for posting and sharing public content. You should assume that anything you post on Ello other than private messages will be accessed by others.

    Search engines will be able to see the content you post. Content you post may be copied, shared, or re-posted on Ello and on other parts of the internet in ways that you and we cannot control.

    We have made it easy for you to delete posted content from your personal account, and also to delete your account altogether (there’s a link to do so on your personal settings page).

    However, we may store backups of your content on our servers, even after it is deleted or after you delete your account.

    Furthermore, deleting your account or specific content doesn’t mean that your content hasn’t been copied or shared on Ello, and on other parts of the internet by people or services that have nothing to do with Ello.

    We strongly suggest that you consider this when deciding what to post and what not to post on Ello (or anywhere on the Internet, for that matter). Please post responsibly!

    To summarize there are 3 important things to note:

    1. Ello is not a private network. Anything posted to your profile is public
    2. Content is indexed by the search engines
    3. Even after the content is deleted it is still available on the Ello servers

    Based on the number of people moving to Ello from Facebook due to privacy concerns, I highly recommend that these people take a moment to educate themselves.

    The fact that their Privacy Policy is at best a 2 minute read, I think it is quite lacking in all aspects, especially user privacy.

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  2. “Ello is not a private network. Anything posted to your profile is public” WHAT ??! Thats crazy, then everyone can access my updates etc. Thats much much worse than facebook .. 🙁

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