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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.
I would imagine it's down to too few people being on it still. There was such initial hype for it, then nothing. How long do you suppose people will wait before just not bothering with it?
That it is easy enough to work around such promises. (Not saying Ello would do that, just saying this depends on their intentions not on these promises)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
So it's trying to be Google+ without the popularity? Oh, but pay for aspects of it directly?
I don't see this business model of theirs being sustainable. Not to mention nobody in their right mind is going to want to acquire them with these restrictions bolted on.
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.
Do their statutes forbid that?
Ironic: when you "OK" the manifesto...it invites you to "Share the manifesto" on Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Google+, Tumblr, Reddit and LinkedIn.
Not beautiful but a lot easier to read.
Some really dumb investors. Ello looks like something I could write in PHP in about a day for $100 bucks.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
The page also has Google Analytics tracking bugs in it.
What I'd like to see in the near future is the concept of social media turned into an open standard (much like e-mail) and built out as a non-centralized, distributed network, with DNS controlling which server(s) power which domains. Your social network domain could either be a stand-alone domain (think an internal site for businesses, schools, etc), or it could be hooked into the greater social network, where status updates, messages, etc could propagate between domains and, depending on who your friends with, you would get those updates to show up on your own feed. I'd really like to see a standard drawn up, and then have there be many implementations (ideally open source) of the actual software used to power each social network domain (like XMPP implementations).
With social media becoming such a huge part in a lot of peoples' everyday lives, it really is about time to open it up and stop having it controlled by any single entity.
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?
Keyword 3rd party. Yes you will get ads but they will be served by themselves or second party partners instead of 3rd. Trust no corporation, especially ones who play with words. That is IMO
Jack of all trades,master of none
"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.
Ello has a steep climb ahead of itself. They seem to have adopted the mobile app business model. You get most of the functionality for free but if you want the good stuff you'll have to spend a few bucks.
Personally, I'd be happy to give them a few dollars if I had an iron clad guarantee that none of my personal information is going to be shopped to the highest bidder.
But in the social network space it's all about scale. Massive scale like Facebook and Twitter have. It's going to be a tough sell to people that are used to getting the apps "for free". Its not really free of course -- you just pay FB and Twitter using a different currency (information rather than money). But of course, most people don't understand that. They think that FB is "free" because you don't have to give them any money.
Then along comes Ello asking you to pay. It's going to be a tough sell.
I can see the comparisons with Google+. It's out there and it's pretty good but nobody you know uses it so you don't use it either.
I'd respect the intent if "Sell user-specific data to a third party" was replaced by "Allow 3rd parties any access to your online transactions" since metadata correlations -> identity match.
Further, I expect identifying the class of people who move from the other social networks to Ello due to tracking concerns provides a very valuable dataset.
Randomly spaced fonts WOULD be harder to read.
However, most variable spaced fonts are carefully designed, and their spacing is consistent per character and the design frequently improves readability of the text. There are exceptions, especially with fonts meant more to be "creative", but the goals are significantly different with those fonts to begin with.
Monospaced text is certainly legible, but not overwhelmingly so. It's also a gigantic waste of space on a page/screen. I usually only use it when alignment of all characters makes sense, such as in coding or configurations.
You're attacking the wrong person. The person you're attacking is making fun of the person who claimed "research".
Slashdot, c'mon. I know that reading is a lost art, but could you at least make an effort?
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
But being web-only is a huge handicap right now.
Got any figures to back that up?
Until very recently there was no official app for reddit.
1. Enable JavaScript (OK, everybody requires that, NBD) but then the real kicker 2. You have this mass of circles that heave and scroll as you move your pointer. Sea-sickness. OMG, you're supposed to click those circles? Why???
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
It would be nice if the company was run from a country that didn't throw its constitution out the window when it becomes inconvenient.
>> Ello's choice of a mono sans-serif font is significant for indicating that their message is a simple but powerful one
Or, that they all play a lot of Dwarf Fortress.
Monospaced fonts have a warm and rich sound that you just can't get out of a CD or digital file.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
I don't see how anyone can believe this:
Ello uses an anonymized version of Google Analytics to gather and aggregate general information about user behavior. Google may use this information for the purpose of evaluating your use of the site, compiling reports on site activity for us and providing other services relating to site activity and internet usage. Google may also transfer this information to third parties where required to do so by law, or where such third parties process the information on Google’s behalf. To the best of our knowledge, the information gathered by Google on Ello’s behalf is collected in such a way that neither Ello, nor Google, can easily trace saved information back to any individual user.
>> The news here is that you're willing to spend an entire day touching PHP for only $100
Funniest thing I read all day.
They didn't specifically say "companies" are included so they can make all the money they want off business accounts.
Also, I think it's reasonable to call the main site the platform like Android and then make money off freemium game and app sales, also like Android or the Apple Store. That's definitely enough money right there.
Oh, horseshit. Good reason not to a typesetter's advice when designing a product. Cosmetics are only possibly good for getting that first date. A relationship based on cosmetics is doomed. Good gas mileage is not cosmetic.
Of course horseshit is just the thing to attract more people to your point of view.
Your slashdot id is low enough to suggest that you are older than 15. So perhaps it is time to learn to argue like an adult.
Will
What happens if they don't follow the rules? Will they serve prison time?
It's not just selling your data to third parties, it's collecting the data in the FIRST place that alienates many users. Many people, for example, don't realize that Facebook is tracking them all over the web, or that their smartphone Facebook app is tracking their exact location 24/7. You can download apps that show you where your Facebook friends are at that particular moment on a Google map. Wow, old Fred's in that topless joint again. Why is she in Bill's house at 2 a.m.? Why do I get ads for Home Depot when I'm driving past Home Depot? I'm really trying not to make a passe' joke about "Big Brother." And many people don't realize that signing in with Facebook, or just having those little like/share icons on a web page, enables Facebook to run scripts that can track everything you do on that page. OK, so they say they "don't sell your data to third parties." Big deal. That doesn't cover the bases, not even close.
I would have thought this would be the elephant in the room, but maybe I'm the only one missing it:
Company takes in a five million dollar funding round.
Company promises to never make a profit.
How are they going to pay back the funding?
What exactly is the company that paid the money "investing" in if the recipient company never plans to get money from their "customers"?
Finally.
I imagine the intent is to make people who currently use the other social media sites comfortable with migrating to Ello. This way a user could start using it even though none of their friends are on it yet.
If Ello catches on and becomes popular, then users could stop doing the auto-push to other networks.
I haven't looked at their site, but hopefully they allow easily toggling that option. And hopefully they make signing up easy without tying it to your existing accounts.