Recently there has been a huge buzz about the new social network, Ello. The shiny object syndrome is hitting hit high gear with everyone lusting after invites to this new social network, which has been billed as a Facebook killer. I was lucky to get an invite from a friend. I have been on the platform for about week and still playing around with the functions of Ello.
Ello is still every much in beta and adding features, for what it seems like daily. Currently, it is a bare bones closed social platform offering posting with photos, links, and/or video. Temper your expectations or you will be underwhelmed. This isn’t Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. Yet anyway in terms of features.
First Impressions of Ello.
These are first impressions from limited use of Ello and like with everything evolving:
– The user interface is very clean and minimalist, which makes sense since it was created by designers and artists. For me, it hasn’t been intuitive to navigate. Perhaps it is like going from a PC to Mac. Maybe I need to retrain my mind to simple over over-engineered.
– There is a search feature, but that is really limited and frankly I have no clue what it allows you to search for.
– Ello does not have a mobile app at this time. That’s limiting. I think that’s what doomed Google+ is they took forever to launch a mobile app so I’m hoping Ello is putting one on the top of the list.
– Ello has two “friend” categories: friends and noise. I understand the concept behind it, but don’t quite understand how it works. Is it a way to segment for making sure you aren’t missing folks you care to interact with? Sort of like a Twitter list.
Is Ello a Facebook killer?
That’s hard to say at this point. Could it be an alternative to Facebook, their privacy practices, and users lack of trust in the Facebook to do the right thing? Maybe. It all will depend on the features they add in the future. And how they decide to fund themselves if they aren’t going to have advertising or sell user data. They will fill a need for a closed environment where data isn’t brokered.
Ello feels like a clean slate for some of us who have been early adopters of social media. This is refreshing. Just to go back to simple online social interactions.
Like with every social network, it isn’t for everyone. And that’s OK. I’m willing to go along for the ride in the beta version to see where it goes.
And by the way… like Twitter, I’m @amvandenhurk on Ello. Keeping it simple handle-wise.
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