
Ello: You are not a product. - esolyt
http://ello.co
======
latitude

      You never have to pay anything, and you can keep using 
      Ello forever, for free. By choosing to buy a feature now
      and then for a very small amount of money you support 
      our work and help us make Ello better and better.
    

This is way too generous and altruistic to be practical. They obviously mean
well, but this is effectively a donation-based model and it very rarely works
in practice.

What I think they should do is to offer personal accounts for free and charge
for enterprise presence. I know a handful of people who use Facebook and
Twitter in read-only mode and who follow just the companies. They effectively
use social networks as a news feed of product updates, coupons, deals,
discounts, etc. Moreover, they explicitly seek out the companies and follow
them. If you think about it, it's an insane arrangement - you have people
opting in to hear to what you have to say. This is valuable, this is something
worth paying for _and_ it keeps the network free for the individuals.

------
cookingrobot
Yesterday my Facebook newsfeed blew up with non-tech friends posting about
Ello. No-one is signing up because it works better, they just all want out of
Facebook.

I don't know if Ello will take off, but there is definitely a massive demand
for "anything but Facebook".

~~~
onewaystreet
And how many are still using Facebook today?

~~~
EC1
All of them, minus that one guy who likes to be contrarian.

------
kolev
I'm sorry, but the UI is so confusing and clunky, it does not appeal to me.
Plus, if we don't want ads, there's alpha.app.net - scalable, has a powerful
API, actively developed, and embraced by many of us already. They just need to
rebrand as this whole subdomain/alpha thing bothers.

~~~
opendais
Eh, [http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-
union/](http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-union/)

I'm not sure app.net can be considered a viable long term solution.

~~~
freehunter
It would be if people signed up for it and used it. What does Ello offer than
App.net doesn't?

~~~
kolev
Same would apply to Ello. If not enough people buy the premium features, it
will collapse. Ads on websites are not because developers want to overwhelm
people with ads and sell data, it's to keep the lights on when most users just
want a free ride.

------
jdeisenberg
I'd prefer to go with a distributed social network, of which there are many
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_prot...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking)),
but none seems to have developed a great deal of traction.

~~~
mkr-hn
They'll continue to not gain traction until someone tries to figure out why. I
ran into roadblocks trying to interact with people on different sites. I'm not
sure exactly how to overcome them, but I guess it's something like an OpenID
sign-in. I never bothered since I had other networks to try out.

This is probably why ello is gaining traction where app.net and similar
didn't. You make an account, and there's no counterintuitive steps--relative
to dominant social networks--to connecting with other people.

~~~
onewaystreet
The reason why is because most people don't want another social network. The
problem that Diaspora, app.net and Ello are trying to solve is not actually
seen as a problem by most people.

------
Mithaldu
Broken in Opera 12, astonishingly badly. Literally no way to contact anyone of
their team in any way (email, twitter) but through ello itself.

Edit: It was pointed out that there is an email adress, though a very
skillfully hidden one.

~~~
cjslep
On Chrome, the back button wouldn't take me back here to make this comment -
it kept switching between the first two items in their list.

~~~
smaili
Same here. Looks like their javascript is adding a lot of history entries so
the fastest way to get back is to hold down the back button so you see the
entire history list.

------
podgib
I love it how so many websites with terrible UI proudly proclaim that they are
'beautiful'.

~~~
freehunter
It's like a good-looking person with a terrible personality. Beautiful, but
you wouldn't want to live with them.

------
highwind
Ugh... just scrolling through that page adds TON of baggage in the browser
history. So much for the back button.

If I didn't click a link or a button, don't add things to history. Please.

~~~
shampine
Back buttons? Where ello is going we don't need back buttons.

~~~
MattyMc
My favourite comment ever on HN :)

------
kungfooguru
Classic. It is just free! Only charging (once) to add "special features".
Curious what their cost projections are that they think this will work...

~~~
mkr-hn
How much of the cost of a Facebook or Twitter is because of resource-heavy
data mining? Ello doesn't have much data to mine beyond what you'd find in a
typical early 2000s perl guestbook script.

~~~
kungfooguru
Storage and bandwidth is still a huge cost.

------
shashashasha
Ello looks like it raised a seed round from Fresh Tracks Capital in Vermont:

"Ello.co is a beautiful, simple & transparent ad-free social network. Ello is
designed with the end user in mind, not advertisers, promising “You are not a
product”. The site is a collaboration between Paul Budnitz, the graphic design
lab Berger & Föhr, and the technologists at Mode Set."

[http://www.freshtrackscap.com/fund-iii-
companies/Ello](http://www.freshtrackscap.com/fund-iii-companies/Ello)

Does anyone know any more about Fresh Tracks?

~~~
jlark777
It looks to be a small VC firm founded in Vermont. I don't recognize the
players off-hand but I do recognize the organizations they're affiliated with.

Vermont has a very small, active (activist, even) business community...they
tend to like to grow things at home.

------
rcconf
If you scroll down the page and then hit the back button in the browser;
you're in an infinite loop on the ello.co website.

Highly annoying is an understatement.

------
diminish
It is just free., but what is it? Here:

> Ello is a simple, beautiful, and ad-free social network created by a small
> group of artists and designers.

~~~
mkr-hn
Someone compared it to Livejournal. I never used it, but no one complained
about the comparison, so it might be apt.

~~~
TarpitCarnivore
Livejournal/Tumblr sounds right to me. I don't see how this will be
sustainable though.

------
higherpurpose
* This only applies until Facebook buys us for $5 billion. After that all bets are off, and you _may_ become the product again.

------
adrianlmm
I automatically reject everything that needs an invitation to join, no
offence.

~~~
mkr-hn
They gave me ample invites, but I'm limiting them to the few friends I think
would be interested. And my circle isn't exactly elite or affluent.

~~~
adrianlmm
The invite model worked well with GMail, because once you joined to it you
could contact any one, after all, is just mail.

But with social networks it doesn't work the same, If you need to send
invites, explain to them what is axactly an invite, then explain to them how
to send invite if they want to tell their friends, it is to much work just to
join.

~~~
mkr-hn
The number of Facebook app invites I get daily tells me the average social
network user understands the concept of invites. It's another step to get them
to sign up for a social network, but I've already had people asking me for
invites, and they follow through to the signup.

~~~
adrianlmm
In your case, but in mine, my circle of friends are just computer casual
users, and Facebook invites are not mandatory to join, you can go to
www.facebook.com and join there, no invite required, you can tell your Friends
to go there and join and not to "hey, waith till I send you an invite", and
that's another issue.

------
onli
Ok, i see the appeal. A social network that promises to be different than
facebook can reach quite some people, and that will grow every time there is
something perceived as being wrong with facebook.

On the other hand, they also claim to be beautiful. And I really don't think
so. It is different, that makes it nice. But black on grey with grey
typewriter font, retro-boxes and favicon-sized avatar images mixed with
scroll-indicators from the latest trend - that is a mess.

But at least they are not a 0815-modern website, designwise, maybe they can
reach somethin nice with the approach.

------
xngzng
Curious to know the business model. How do they sustain?

~~~
austinl
From Ello's about page,

"Ello is completely free to use.

We occasionally offer special features to our users. If we create a special
feature that you really like, you may choose to support Ello by paying a very
small amount of money to add that feature to your Ello account.

You never have to pay anything, and you can keep using Ello forever, for free.
By choosing to buy a feature now and then for a very small amount of money you
support our work and help us make Ello better and better."

[https://ello.co/wtf/post/about-ello](https://ello.co/wtf/post/about-ello)

Edit: Whether or not that will actually sustain them, I suppose we'll find
out.

~~~
eps
Yeah. That's not really a business model though, more of a pipe dream. You
cannot support a service with one-time "very small" optional charges. Unless,
of course, you start to twist users arms, in which case these charges stop
being optional.

~~~
dataminded
$5 will buy a full month of server time on a modern cloud host. I imagine that
if they can extract that much out of a user, they can make it go a very long
way. This is especially true if the optional charges include things that
consume large amounts of disk or bandwidth (video/pictures and associated
long-term retention).

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
$5 a month out of each and every user? Good luck with that - it would put them
over Google and MASSIVELY beyond Twitter and Facebook (both in single figures
annually).

------
Tyrannosaurs
Ad free and with no data mining like facebook and twitter used to be?

Things start well, but things change, and sadly I see no reason why history
won't repeat itself. Goodwill doesn't pay for hosting or bandwidth and most
social network users simply aren't willing to pay enough out of their own
pocket, particularly not when there are free alternatives.

------
thrush
What makes me bullish on ello is that it seems like there is an incredible
team behind it.

    
    
      - Paul Bundtz - Founder of Kidrobot
      - Berger and Fohr - Art Design Studio
      - Mode Set - Agile Software Consultancy
    

All these representatives would be successful on their own. It seems like
they're combing forces for something BIG

------
general_failure
I don't know how to say this.

DO NOT VISIT. It hijacks your back button and I had to close the tab. chrome
on mac

~~~
computerjunkie
I can confirm its on Firefox too. Having freedom to go back is one of the
important things about a user interface.

------
Fuzzwah
I remember a time, back in my QuakeWorld addict days, when I use to read .plan
file updates.

Are there any technical reasons why the old finger / .plan system couldn't be
revived to replace facebook, twitter, etc, with an open and simple social
network?

~~~
cbd1984
> Are there any technical reasons why the old finger / .plan system couldn't
> be revived to replace facebook, twitter, etc, with an open and simple social
> network?

People have tried that and failed. The technical reason appears to be
"UI/UX/average person/etc. issues", whatever you want to call them these days.
Average social network users seem to want a unified system which distributed
platforms have a hard time providing.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network)

~~~
williamcotton
Unified system.... distributed platform... _cough_ blockchain _cough_

------
thu
Invite only. The first profile I see on their homepage is
[https://ello.co/bitchesonbicycles](https://ello.co/bitchesonbicycles) with
2392 followers. I guess I don't want to be invited.

~~~
hanley
Please edit that link and put NSFW tags. Thanks.

~~~
thu
It seems I can't edit it. Sorry, it didn't cross my mind (and the link text is
clear enough for those that would otherwise need the NSFW tag).

~~~
hanley
I expected women on bikes based on the link, but the nudity in the second
photo was definitely not expected.

------
ser_ocelot
I've been wondering about alternatives to Twitter as Twitter slowly circles
the shit-drain as they try to copy Facebook. Will wait and see about Ello.

Have to say, websites with egregious javascript can be so annoying.

------
bitJericho
Broken on my work pc. Guess I can't use it at work... guess I can be
productive instead.

Not sure how they can stay in business if they don't charge and they don't
advertise.

------
NicoleToland
While searching for new social networks, I came across an app called Groopie.
I'm still trying to figure out how to use it but you can record videos with
your friends. You ping them to record. After they are done recording, their
footage will get uploaded to your phone in seconds, then you can edit and
blend the two to create one video. Seems like they are on to something!

------
alphadevx
Navigation kills the back button :-(

