Ello world: The Ad-free social networking site is looking pretty neat right now
Ello
‘Ello world’ was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the home page of Ello today. Got it! Ello World as in HELLO WORLD, the first words that comes out when we look at good ol’ HTML page ( the plain clean and crisp webpage).
Clean, crisp and yes, most important of all Ad-Free social site! That’s Ello for all of us.
Thanks to the invite from my friend Sreeraman, I joined in to explore this site today – My Profile AnanthV at Ello
It is quite, calm and very serene to begin with. I am using the word serene since, in general when we say the words “Social networking” all we can see are real-time status updates, pictures, videos, links in scores with advertisements all around the webpage. But, not Ello, it looks beautiful. It’s simple and elegant, especially when you look at the white space through the pages of this networking site. That’s what strikes you the most about this site when you log-in for the very first time.
Paul Budnitz of Ello stressed that on other social sites like Facebook, the social media users or social networking users are products and nothing more. So his focus with Ello was to make it an Anti-social site. Well, isn’t that how everyone spoke about this site. Hmmmmm…. well, that’s how it seemed to users across the globe when everyone was reading about the ANTI-Social site.
It’s not really an anti-social site, rather it is an ad-free site made for You ….. the site for the users with a simple idea to benefit the users.
Some core features of ELLO that I really loved:
- User Profile picture: It shows the picture in a circular format.
- Header image: Ample space to DEFINE WHO YOU are! Your header image area:
Ello Avatar Header
- Friends: You can follow FRIENDS by clicking on their profile and clicking on FOLLOW or you can drag their circular icons into two categories – FRIENDS or NOISE. Here, friends are like FOLLOWERS on eg. on Twitter @AnanthV9 and @AnanthV on Ello
- Cool way to view your conversations
Difference between ELLO’s Friends and Noise: Follow the people you care about most in FRIENDS, which displays each post in an expanded, list format. It’s a great way to look at full-sized content by people you are really interested in following. Put everyone else in NOISE, which offers a compressed, fluid-grid based layout that makes it easy for browsing lots of posts quickly. You can move people between FRIENDS and NOISE in bulk by navigating from the full list of people you are following (click the followers link on your profile page, and then click the FRIENDS or NOISE button above each user image). 
- DISCOVER option: Let’s you browse through interesting things on the site.
Ello
- Toggle bar: An awesome and simple TOGGLE Bar feature that let’s you re-size your view of the site page and features.
The OMNIBAR:
The Omnibar is the black bar next to your user profile image at the top of your stream, and you use it to post things on Ello. You can also use the Omnibar to mention others in your posts, and very shortly, to comment on other people’s posts and to send private message to your friends.
PROS:
- Clean, crisp and smooth.
- Ad-free
- Our data and our digital footprints stays with us or at least on the ello site itself and not sold to third party websites
CONS:
- Control for posting an update, etc is shown in a light gray type that can be hard to locate at first.
List of features already available on the site:
- Notification Center
- Blocking & Muting
- Simple Commenting
- @mention pre-population on user profiles
- Improved error handling
- Enhanced user Discovery
- Fluid grid Noise view
- Views per post
- Drag users between Friends & Noise (still buggy)
- Email notifications (Following/Invite Accepted/Mentions)
- Invitation system & ability to invite Friends
- Network-wide in-stream announcement system
- Javascript refactor = One Page Application (OPA)
- In-Stream notifications (Following/Invite Accepted)
- In-line Emoji integration
- View Followers & Following lists
- Welcome post & brief tutorial
- Re-order fields within Omnibar
- WTF section (Help, About & Policies)
- Post #, Follower # & Following #
- @mentions (update: autocompleter now works!)
- Arrow keys hide and reveal drawer & access full-screen publishing mode
- Ability to make profile visible on Ello network only (on/off)
- Image compression
- Follow (Friends/Noise)
- Unfollow (Friends/Noise)
- Omnibar post text (basic)
- Omnibar post text advanced (bold, italic, urls)
- Omnibar post images
- Omnibar post animated GIFs
- Omnibar post Emoji
- Omnibar delete posts
- Omnibar edit posts
- Time stamp displays post detail/permalink
- Option to toggle Google Analytics on/off
- Respect DNT browsers settings
Listing of UPCOMING features:
- NSFW settings
- Inappropriate content flagging
- Audio integration (Soundcloud)
- Private Accounts
- Rich (multimedia) commenting
- Mobile web refinements
- Repost w/ author attribution
- Online/offline user designation
- Love + Love bookmarking stream
- Emoji index
- Video integration (Youtube, Vimeo, Instagram & Vine)
- @@ Private Messaging
- Auto-push posts to other networks
- iOS & Android mobile apps
It’s too soon to tell how will this site affect the social media space, the digital advertising space, but yes, as of date, if I need some space when online, some peace and serenity while I am still able to interact with ‘just my friends’ and that too ad-free, this is the place I would want to be.
Ello is a planet on it’s…… well may be that’s stretching it a bit too much. Alright, a unique place on its own, a promising land if you will, that has recently shown us the need to be online, but yet, be in control!
Looking forward to a refreshing and engaging connect ahead.
BE WELL
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