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Ello Formally Promises To Remain Ad-Free, Raises $5.5M
Social media site Ello is presented as the anti-Facebook, promising an ad-free social network, and that they won't sell private data. Today, they've also announced that Ello has become a Public Benefit Corporation, and that the site's anti-advertising promise has been enshrined in a corporate charter. The BBC reports on the restrictions that Ello has therefore entered into, which mean the site cannot, for monetary gain,
- Sell user-specific data to a third party
- Enter into an agreement to display paid advertising on behalf of a third party; and
- In the event of an acquisition or asset transfer, the Company shall require any acquiring entity to adopt these requirements with respect to the operation of Ello or its assets.
While that might turn off some potential revenue flows (the company says it will make money by selling optional features), as the linked article points out, it hasn't turned off investors; Ello has now raised $5.5 million from investors.
Wow, they formally promised.
Is a formal promise more legally binding than a non-formal promise? Is it transferable and binding to someone who subsequently buys Ello?
It sounds good in principle, but is it really legally binding in any sense?
As always, I remain skeptical about such things ... because time and time again companies have reneged on such promises. Or after they've gone through bankruptcy/get sold the new owner simply ignores any of these things.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Ironic: when you "OK" the manifesto...it invites you to "Share the manifesto" on Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+, Tumblr, Reddit and LinkedIn.
And it serves up data from cloudfront, which is just a front end for Amazon's analytics, isn't it?
It also makes references to integrating with YouTube, and doing an auto-push to "other" networks (which I assume is the list you gave).
So, we won't sell your stuff, but we'll be so tightly integrated with these other sites that they'll know what you're doing anyway.
If the whole point is to avoid Facebook et al, WTF is the point of broadcasting to them everything you do?
Goodbye Ello.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And no matter what the charter is, if they are liquidated the court will sell all of your data to the highest bidder to pay off creditors.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"user-specific" = "we are going to sell aggregated data"
"on behalf of a third party" = "we are going to get direct ad sales up and running soon"
#3 is just hysterical ... if they get acquired, they lose the right to any such thing as they become a wholly owned subsidiary, subject to whatever policies the parent company deems fit. As if it hasn't already happened about a billion times by startups who did one thing, then were bought up and summarily dismantled. Ello makes a false assumption that people give a damn about their product. An acquiring company may see it as a way to get a seasoned dev/qe team and shutter the service entirely. The examples of plucky startups that got pulled into the Apple/Google/Microsoft/$GINORMOUS_COMPANY orbit and summarily forgotten or dissolved is pretty big.
Not just too few people... it's also feature incomplete.
It's already started... Ello has failed to learn the lesson of G+ and odds are, it will suffer the same fate. Gatekeeping at launch is just shooting yourself in the foot - people want to try your system, and if you lock them out... they aren't coming back. First impressions matter, and a barred door with a sign saying "only kewl kids allowed" makes a powerful first impression. In addition, G+, and Diaspora, and now Ello can't seem to grasp that to most people, personal privacy is just one of the many factors that they weigh. On top of the network effect there's also the features the system supports (chat, pages/groups, games, etc...), and all of the would be pretenders have fallen short on that front. (Or added them too late to make a difference.)
On top of that... Ello is going to have to come up with some pretty impressive optional features in order to induce people to pay for them - things the users can't get elsewhere while *also* providing a complete set of the features users have come to expect. That's a very tall order.
There's no doubt that like G+, Ello might be able to eke out a meager living on the fringes... but as a Facebook killer, or even serious competitor, it's already dead.
Any typesetter will tell you that the choice of font is important to getting your message across.
Ello's choice of a mono sans-serif font is significant for indicating that their message is a simple but powerful one. And that they are significantly different from their competitors.
Volkswagen in the 1970s used the same approach to emphasize that their vehicles were so different from USA cars that you could not measure their performance using the same yardstick. Volkswagen was all about mpg and economy when USA car makings were competing on creature comforts and acceleration. Ello's choice of font is emphasizing that its product should not be judged with the same criteria that Facebook wants you to use.
The danger with Ello's choice of font is that if used in conveying any message that is not simple, like instructions or an argument about the evils of advertising, many readers may feel like they are being treated as grade schoolers, and be turned off by the typesetting. Time will tell whether Ello will avoid that pitfall. Hopefully they have already chosen a proportional font for lengthier prose.
Will