The social media world has recently been buzzing about Ello.co, a social media network claiming to be a "simple, beautiful and ad-free social network".
What does it stand for?
One of its first messages to its users is "Your social network is owned by advertisers". Ello.co's differentiates itself from the social network giants such as Facebook and Twitter from a data collection perspective: It doesn't track personal data used for advertising purposes and it doesn't have ads. Launched in March 2014, the social network initially got traction from the LGBT community because Facebook refused a few drag artists to have both a real name and a performance name on their profile. Refusing that us consumers become "products" of websites such as Facebook that track personal data to help advertisers reach their target customers better.
Should the tech giants be worried?
The VC fund FreshTracks Capital trusts Ello.co's founder Paul Baudnitz and has injected close to half a million dollars in his start-up. According to the betabeat.com, Ello.co is clearly gaining in popularity: Its hourly sign-up requests has jumped from 4,000 to 31,000 in just about a week. Because Ello.co won't have any advertising, the companies earning most of their revenue from advertising shouldn't be too worried from a demand side - advertisers will still use those platforms to advertise their products or services. However, the supply side is more worry some. What if the supply side, i.e. us the consumers, leave these networks? In a point in time where Twitter redefined its "users" definition to show investors that it was still growing, a simple stagnation of number of users could be a threat to the tech giants.
(How) Can it be sustained?
It is required to be referred to be able to join the site. While such an "exclusive" feeling can generate attraction, its purpose is diluted as soon as the website reaches a critical mass. There is no revenue model as such for now. It has been mentioned that some add-on features might be purchased by users, but the current quality level of both the design and the functionality of the website doesn't seem to be good enough to overthrow the current offerings out there. Upgrading on that front as well as figuring out a differentiated way of generating revenues should allow Ello.co to become more than just a "Yo" type of hype
https://ello.co/wtf/post/about
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/09/26/5-things-to-know-about-ello-the-social-network-with-a-manifesto/
http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/elloco-est-il-reellement-un-reseau-social-philanthrope-pas-si-sur-39806973.htm
http://betabeat.com/2014/09/ellos-traffic-deluge-almost-caused-a-total-new-user-freeze-out-crisis-averted/
No comments:
Post a Comment