

'Anti-Facebook' platform Ello attracts thousands - petethomas
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29409541

======
zorpner
Andy Baio wrote a small piece exploring Ello's funding and hypothesizing that
their bluster about not selling your data/running ads is worth about as much
as Livejournal's was:
[https://ello.co/waxpancake/post/oy73kFfDdhOPh8Jv9z9pFA](https://ello.co/waxpancake/post/oy73kFfDdhOPh8Jv9z9pFA)

~~~
xnull2guest
Yeah one of the problems with Ello is that there's no real guarantee that they
won't eventually start selling/mining/advertizing or that they won't be bought
by a company that will.

Diaspora had the right philosophy.

------
rohunati
What is so "beautiful" about this? Honest question.

1) So much dead real estate.

2) The buttons the same as input fields. Only difference is color but there's
no distinguishing otherwise.

3) Strange choice of font. Seems like they're going for a typewriter feel, but
I'm not sure how that's useful for a website. My opinion of course, but I
don't really see the aesthetic appeal of a typewriter look here.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
The beauty resides in the privacy.

>> _It has been dubbed the "anti-Facebook" network because of a pledge to
carry no adverts or sell user data._

~~~
TeMPOraL
Words, words, words. How many times a start-up pledges something (like, being
there to actually solve a problem for users) only to get to "an exit" and
disappear, selling on shutting down the product? Even if they really believe
what they say (for which their cliché-laden copy is a negative evidence in my
book), investors will want their returns. I don't think they're gonna pull
this off with micropayments.

I need more than a pledge to start believing in a VC-backed startup.

~~~
ChrisAntaki
With time, we'll see if the beauty is skin deep.

------
thefreeman
Has anyone actually used this? It was posted to HN the other day and didn't
not seem to receive positive feedback.

Most of the users profiles I have clicked on seem pretty boring. I fail to see
what is so attractive about it.

I definitely am taking the owners claim of "31,000 requests an hour" with a
grain of salt.

Honestly, does the average person even care about being advertised to, or
having their data mined? I have never heard anyone outside of tech circles
even talk about it.

~~~
cwilson
It's a social network based on two promises:

1\. It's beautiful, which they had to add because they knew just saying "we
won't sell your data" would not go far enough. They needed that extra edge. In
my humble opinion, it's actually quite ugly, so I find it pretty funny they
are advertising this as a selling point.

2\. They don't sell your data. We all know this is flawed because there is no
promise this won't happen in the future, and to boot MOST normal people do not
care about this.

Their initial launch had the right elements that allowed it to go viral and
non-technical people started signing up. I would LOVE to see some stats from
the Ello team around retention, as I am willing to bet a large sum of money
that stat is really bad.

~~~
icelancer
They should escrow a few million in a bank somewhere, and if the data has been
deemed to be sold to anyone (judged by a third-party neutral arbitrator), the
money is donated to the EFF. Then we'll see who is really serious about their
promises.

~~~
dredmorbius
Quite the interesting suggestion.

------
personjerry
I saw a lot of hype about Ello in the Hackathon Hackers facebook group. This
may be against the typical positive feedback mentality of HN, but it kinda
seems like a huge circle __ __, a product of the tech bubble enthusiasm, as no
one else anywhere has mentioned it (except on Hacker News that one time).

In fact, I suspect the "31,000 invites" was the result of one post on the
Facebook group involving an exploit that used dictionary attacks to generate
invites for someone's account, which was quickly used by several people, but
eventually taken down, and is not their average traffic.

I suspect this because my personal opinion, my friends' opinions, and it
appears quite a number of Hacker News peoples opinions, while anecdotal, seem
to indicate that Ello is quite lackluster, and I find it hard to believe that
many people would want to try a social media platform that:

a) has none of their friends on it yet

b) doesn't look great

c) appeals to you through things you typically don't care about ("ads",
"data", "privacy")

------
Animats
Maybe "free" has become too expensive. As the technology needed to provide a
service gets cheaper, the revenue needed to support it drops. The ad density
ought to drop too, but it doesn't. That creates a vulnerability for "free"
social services. They can be undercut on user attention cost.

What does it really cost to run a social network? $5/user/month?
$1/user/month? If you could put it on your phone bill, would you notice?

As for "The fact is nobody has ever made a significant move away from any
internet provider because of advertising or data", remember Myspace. They were
#1 once. Their ad density got too high and people got fed up and left.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _What does it really cost to run a social network? $5 /user/month?
> $1/user/month?_

More than ${what parents will let their kid spend on the Internet}, which is
usually > $0. The problem with non-free Internet is that it quickly gets
inaccessible to those without credit cards.

------
DAddYE
I'm not in the beta program so from the outside is hard to judge. That said I
find it very difficult that can even touch twitter or facebook. It reminds me
a bit of app.net and ghost.org

However is impressive to me how much exposure ello is getting every day, don't
get me wrong but right now I can't see why. Feel free to tell me that's I'm
wrong, I'm really interested.

I wish them all the best but more importantly that this "hype" will last

~~~
te_chris
Ghost is a blogging platform/OSS and quite a good one at that. Not sure what
that has to do with the failure that is app.net?

~~~
DAddYE
Yep, that's the whole point. Judging from the profiles shown seems like a
microblog. App.net was another twitter like tool that aimed in not selling
your data and not showing ads.

------
mgkimsal
"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."

So... what if some of my "connecting" and "creating" is viewed by some as
deception or coercion? Eye of the beholder and all that...

Certainly FB is a lot of data mining to sell ads, but I also see plenty of
people connecting with family, creating groups and communities and
communicating and growing... and they didn't need some monospaced hipsterific
platform to do it.

~~~
xnull2guest
Reprising and modifying an old comment from another account:

The latest trends in advertising has moved beyond 'behavioral' targeted
advertising, where a user is served specific content because they may have
browsed something similar in the past.

The new trend is to use social networking models to discover 'influencers' in
social groups and use those people's reputations to recommend products to
other people. The diagrams (a) and (b) on page nine of the following research
paper is a crude example:
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.4327v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1206.4327v1.pdf)

Lindex 'Enterprise SEO Software' has this to say: "Our latest innovation
Linkdex Networks enables you to visualise and analyse these groups of relevant
influencers. The objective is to enable digital marketers to gradually
identify the right personalities and build relationships with them, spreading
along those networks for maximum exposure. If someone within your network has
lots of relationships pointing to them you know that they are perceived as
trustworthy sources. The aim is to find influencers who are passionate on a
niche topic, have strong relationships with the group and are receptive to new
ideas with plenty of reach." [1]

It's on fire everywhere in marketing and advertising and there are lots of
variations being tried and tested at the moment, and also publicly funded
research at universities [2]. Marketers will drop prices online when they
detect influencers, in an attempt to encourage them to speak highly of their
product to their friends and family (who will need to buy at full price). The
Marketing Science Institute has a whole section dedicated to social networks
and influencing them [3][4].

Just searching for the term "social contagion advertising" or "advertising
influencers" reveals media research arms with nifty tables that map out ways
of influencing social groups by targeting information strategically at certain
members. For example you can get people to change their view of the
"legitimacy of an item" by "encourag[ing] influential targets to adopt the
item" or create the idea of a "status disadvantage of not adopting" by
"Emphasiz[ing] activities of close connections in a social network to
influence behavior". [5]

Perhaps a side note, but the DoD "MINERVA initiative" [6] studies social
contagion strategies to track, create or lessen political instability in other
countries (although the initiative studies a lot of other things too). The
USAID Cuban Twitter project sought to (and nearly succeeded in) creating mass
unrest by appearing to be a grassroots movement on Twitter in Cuba seeking the
overthrow of the government. Snowden documents and leaked HB Gary memos show
that both the NSA and GCHQ engage in astroturfing and social media
manipulation [7][8][9]. The giant meta-data graph created by the NSA is also
particularly valuable for 'influencer' and 'social contagion' analysis (leaks
showed they do use it to understand internal chain-of-command and organization
structure for target selection). You can bet - although direct proof is
forthcoming - that other countries have these capabilities, or analogues to
them, for targetting American and NATO news and social feeds.

These sorts of forces are abound on social media websites, as can be seen in
the recent Wired article "I liked everything I saw on Facebook for two days"
[10]. What's more, the role that social media has begun to play in political
races is incredible. If you have the time and interest, look up the
capabilities of incumbent Obama's "The Cave" for social media evangelism and
tracking. Real time social estimates of support across dozens of major social
media platforms with the ability to influence and target any of them at will.
Interns scrambling to be "first to post" on online discussions in news media
articles.

To be a member of online social media is to be surveilled by both governments
and by corporations, to have your content curated for financial purposes, and
to have your information sold to the highest bidder. It is also to be
influenced not just by direct advertisement, but also indirectly through
information that gets carried word of mouth. On the internet nobody knows that
you are a dog. This is often an inconvenience and it allows trolls and other
unsavory social behavior. Unfortunately it is now also true that on social
media, those with the right perspective - those that can see social media at
the thousand foot view - not only know that you are a dog, but also know how
to make you drool when they ring a bell.

[1] [http://www.linkdex.com/blog/social-contagion-why-ideas-
and-p...](http://www.linkdex.com/blog/social-contagion-why-ideas-and-products-
become-popular/)

[2]
[http://icos.umich.edu/sites/icos6.cms.si.umich.edu/files/lec...](http://icos.umich.edu/sites/icos6.cms.si.umich.edu/files/lectures/VPDFinal1110.pdf)

[3] [http://www.msi.org/reports/distinguishing-among-
mechanisms-o...](http://www.msi.org/reports/distinguishing-among-mechanisms-
of-social-contagion-in-new-product-adoption/)

[4] [http://www.msi.org/articles/what-drives-social-contagion-
in-...](http://www.msi.org/articles/what-drives-social-contagion-in-new-
product-adoption-1/)

[5] [http://socialmediaandmobileresearch.com/2014/03/10/social-
co...](http://socialmediaandmobileresearch.com/2014/03/10/social-contagion/)

[6] [http://minerva.dtic.mil/](http://minerva.dtic.mil/)

[7] [https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipula...](https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-
manipulation/)

[8]
[http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jun/22/hacking-
anonymous)

[9] [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-
The...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The-HB-Gary-
Email-That-Should-Concern-Us-All)

[10] [http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-
fac...](http://www.wired.com/2014/08/i-liked-everything-i-saw-on-facebook-for-
two-days-heres-what-it-did-to-me/)

Addendum: Another trend in advertizing is 'contextual advertizing' where ads
are injected into articles in ways that make them look like they are part of
the content you intended to read. From the invention of 'viral marketing' to
the rise of the corporate news
([http://tinyurl.com/k28ssjh](http://tinyurl.com/k28ssjh)), to be on a social
network and to be online is to be subject to the forces of private interests.

What Ello is saying is that they want to sell the service directly to the
customer instead of selling the user's data to these private forces.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Wow. I guess I'm out of date with state of the art after all...

Your post reminded me of an excellent passage from Yvain's recent post[0]
(it's long, but it is a goldmine).

 _The point is – imagine a country full of bioweapon labs, where people toil
day and night to invent new infectious agents. The existence of these labs,
and their right to throw whatever they develop in the water supply is
protected by law. And the country is also linked by the world’s most perfect
mass transit system that every single person uses every day, so that any new
pathogen can spread to the entire country instantaneously. You’d expect things
to start going bad for that city pretty quickly._

 _Well, we have about a zillion think tanks researching new and better forms
of propaganda. And we have constitutionally protected freedom of speech. And
we have the Internet. So we’re pretty much screwed._

[0] - [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-
moloch/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/)

~~~
walterbell
> So we’re pretty much screwed

No, because the human immune system can learn to defend against propaganda.
Many of the unfair advantages of propaganda arise from nominal invisibility
when masquerading as healthy sensory input.

Take away that cover and it's much cheaper to audit and firewall hostile
media, using exactly the same epidimiological and social network analysis
techniques that can spread parasites and propaganda. The technology works in
both directions, see Palantir and
[http://www.insna.org/socnet.html](http://www.insna.org/socnet.html)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _No, because the human immune system can learn to defend against
> propaganda._

Not only after a lot of damage has already been done.

Also keep in mind that they're not blindly evolving propaganda, they are
engineering it. All that work goes to directly optimize propaganda to be
effective and hard to counter. So by very definition, a good propaganda by
their standards is the one you can't defend against.

~~~
walterbell
Propaganda (and immune responses) have been co-evolving for as long as
recorded history. The difference now is that we have free access via
archive.org to much of the offensive and defensive literature prior to 1920s,
mostly categorized under "occult" and "religion". Newer defensive material can
be found via web search, youtube, etc. Offensive material is everywhere.

The ultimate form of propaganda is to convince the target that resistance is
futile. It's not. The mere thought of resistance begins to alter the outcome.
The best techniques have little to do with technology, e.g. watch "The
Prisoner" UK TV series from the 1960's, much of which remains relevant to
modern media, [http://www.crackle.com/c/the-
prisoner](http://www.crackle.com/c/the-prisoner)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Propaganda (and immune responses) have been co-evolving for as long as
> recorded history._

Well of course, but the point is, immune response is always late to the party
- in many cases only after we've tallied the body count and scared the living
shit out of the next generation.

The other thing is, in case of immune system, we have the benefit of it
working in parallel, not requiring to expend cognitive resources on it. In
case of propaganda, we already have too much to think about. We've already
reached the level where you can craft a message that will sound plausible but
be impossible to fact-check for an average person (myself included). That is,
_we can make people believe anything_ ; the main problem that is being worked
on is how to make them all believe the same thing and to acquire that belief
fast enough.

~~~
walterbell
> _we can make people believe anything_

Only if readers rely purely on words. It's more efficient to triage by social
identity, then decide whether to interpret words.

Here's a defensive browser extension that many HN readers could build: right-
click on a username gives a list of user-defined categories and colors.
Putting a name in a category/color will cause that name to be colorized on all
future posts. Whitelist/blacklist of partisans or astroturfers, reducing cost
of future triage. Since the list is local and the categories are unique to
each person, it can't be manipulated. I've used this type of extension in
another online community, it worked well.

Another fun project: sentiment analysis on HN posts, cross-referencing article
subjects and company names with sentiment and timezone.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I like your ideas.

> _Here 's a defensive browser extension that many HN readers could build:
> right-click on a username gives a list of user-defined categories and
> colors. Putting a name in a category/color will cause that name to be
> colorized on all future posts._

I actually thought a bit about that, I really want to have such feature. I'm
about to start writing myself a tool for browsing HN from my favourite editor,
and on my TODO list is a feature for "taking notes about users". I didn't
think about it as a counter-propaganda device though - I just felt that being
able to easily take and recall notes about what a particular user seems to
know well about, what he/she likes, where he/she works, etc. would help string
more interesting and constructive conversations.

> _Another fun project: sentiment analysis on HN posts, cross-referencing
> article subjects and company names with sentiment and timezone._

Nice idea.

~~~
walterbell
> _on my TODO list is a feature for "taking notes about users"._

This may be useful:
[http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2009/infoscraps/note154...](http://hci.stanford.edu/publications/2009/infoscraps/note1546-vankleek.pdf)

Once you have a whitelist/blacklist, you can filter HN via Algolia to see all
stories where at least N interesting people have commented, almost a Twitter
"follow" for HN.

I wish for an augmented browser, where an analysis app is linked to the
browser by an extension. The extension sends URLs and text to the local
analysis app, which could generate a hotkeyed overlay report within the page.

~~~
TeMPOraL
All interesting ideas. Thanks for the link!

------
TTPrograms
It looks like Ello's claim is that the problems with social networks revolve
around privacy and data mining. Personally, those things aren't nearly my
primary issue - my main frustration with social media is the type of content
it encourages people to share, resulting in (in my experience) a platform
built primarily for expressions of vanity.

For me, until that changes, social media primarily exists as a personal
communication mechanism via messages. In that case the network effect
dominates all other features.

------
post_break
I can't help but think of the arrested development scene. "Dozens, there are
dozens of us!" It's like the cool party, if everyone goes it's like Project X,
if only a few go, it's not a party. I want what Facebook used to be, no bs,
just friends.

~~~
moloch
Only a few hundred million more and they'll be close to Facebook's user-base!

~~~
xnull2guest
Everyone has to start from a few members. Isn't it more interesting to analyze
services based on their features, anyway?

------
aortega
Where does the money come form, if it is not from ads or selling the data?
hosting is not free.

~~~
falsestprophet
For _thousands_ it nearly is free.

------
no_future
You can create a social networking app in 2014 with not a single standout
feature and it will get users?

And here was me thinking that to be successful now you needed a somewhat
original idea or a flawless execution, shows what I know I guess.

~~~
hmans
Ello is living proof of the importance of a _story_. You see, Ello wasn't just
built, it was built "by artists" "frustrated" with the "establishment". There
you go! Instant story, instant success.

------
brewdad
They've already lost. Since I didn't see a link to Ello in the article, I
typed ello.com into my browser. Nope.

I had to search to find out it's ello.co Average user won't bother.

------
TeMPOraL
Closed-source, centralized, founders took VC money. How this is not at least
as bad as Facebook?

Honestly, their copy feels like written by WhatsApp wannabes that got wind of
some tech crowd clichés.

------
ddw
While we are talking about new social media alternatives, Sublevel
(sublevel.net) may be worth checking out. No funding, actually works.

------
sssilver
Why is Ello a better choice for users than Diaspora?

~~~
xnull2guest
It exists in a usable fashion? Not to elbow Diaspora - they have a noble idea.

~~~
krenoten
It's suffering pretty nasty usability issues, actually.

------
naaaaak
If this ever starts to become a serious competitor, Facebook will just acquire
them and all bets are off.

------
pXMzR2A
I am very confused about this whole thing. What does Ello provide that
Diaspora cannot? (srs)

~~~
dredmorbius
More focused development, for starters. Raising capital and getting features
built is ... difficult.

Also a compelling story and userbase. There are people on Ello who aren't on
Diaspora (I'm on both) despite the latter having been around for quite a while
now.

Both lack search, which ... kind of sucks.

What would be really cool is if Ello might figure out a way to talk with
Diaspora, essentially becoming a large node of it (or Friendica, or whatever).

