Ello, a Facebook Killer?
Well we have all heard this before, haven’t we? We have a new social media contender named as “ELLO” which was launched back in August, 2014 but it came to prominence in September. Since its launch many social media “Guru’s” are of mind that Ello is going to derail Facebook for good.
I was of the same opinion but then I got an invite to Ello 🙂
“Simple, beautiful & ad-free”, this is Ello’s tagline and Ello has delivered on this very nicely. Ello is totally against advertising because they think an ad-free interactive social media platform can provide the best experience, unlike Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms who clutter the user experience (as per Ello’s Creators claim). Ello believes in total privacy for its users so it is the main reason there is no ad policy. Ello is easy to use no doubt but it lacks many features which users like and use other social media platforms for. Features as simple as “like” is not present in Ello! Many of the most common features provided by the other social networking platforms are missing, such as
- Lists/Circles are replaced with Friends and Noise for segmentation of friends and family.
- Cannot link anything because there are no Hashtags/Keywords.
- A key feature such as Group Messaging is nowhere to be found.
- Search is not well defined and detailed.
- There is no Mobile App for Ello, users are confined to their personal computers.
And the list above has many more favorite features to add.
Facebook is something which has grown into a giant and there is no way another social media network can slay this giant. People are attached to Facebook, they have built memories with Facebook that will last forever! The user experience on Ello is nowhere near what Facebook is offering, even with those pesky ads, people will always prefer Facebook.
What if a friend or follower of yours post something on Ello and you don’t like the post, you have only two options either put him in Noise or keep him in Friends. Well that is worrisome, because he is going to the same! In famous platforms such as Facebook you can simply hide that particular post and let your “friend” stay in “Friends”.
The creators of Ello appear to had enough creative vision , but now as things are getting clearer, founders of Ello are of the opinion themselves that, it is not possible to gain popularity on Facebook’s level.
In case of Ello vs Facebook, only time will tell the real story of what is going to happen in future. Although I still don’t take Ello as a competitor of Facebook.