Technology
Ad-free social media platform Ello overcomes a technical setback to continue its rapid growth, but one expert questions its business model. The BBC writes:
It was initially designed to just be used by about 90 friends of its founder Paul Budnitz. But the bike shop owner, from the US state of Vermont, opened it to others on 7 August.
It has been dubbed the "anti-Facebook" network because of a pledge to carry no adverts or sell user data. However some experts have cautioned that it might struggle with plans to charge micro-payments for certain "features".
The site has a minimalist design and does not appear as user-friendly, at first glance, as more established networks.
Ello founder Paul Budnitz is a bike shop owner from the US state of Vermont
It has already survived a reported Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack - a targeted flood of internet traffic - which briefly knocked it offline over the weekend.
"We're learning as we go but we have a very strong tech crew and back end," founder Paul Budnitz told the BBC.
"It's in beta and it's buggy and it does weird stuff - and it's all being fixed as quickly as we can."
Mr Budnitz added that he was "flattered" by the "anti-Facebook" description, but said that was not the way he saw his service.
"We don't consider Facebook to be a competitor. We see it as an ad platform and we are a network," he explained.
The network will eventually make money by selling access to features, Mr Budnitz added.
"Like the app store, we're going to sell features for a few dollars," he said.
Members can already check out features in development on the page and register their interest.
However, The Washington Post writes that the biggest problem with the new social networking site is that it is "irredeemably naive":
At its core, Ello’s appeal is all theoretical: People like Ello not because it’s a prettily designed network without ads and user-tracking, but because it represents an idea. An ethic. A way of existing on the Internet in which said existence is meaningful, and not merely for the major technology companies who grind our interests and memories into data for marketers.
“You are the product that’s bought and sold,” the company rails in its opening manifesto. “We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity, and transparency.”
But when you scrutinize that string of buzzwords a little more closely, it looks less like a raison d’etre and more like a web of unlikely assumptions. Ello’s founders assume, for instance, that — given the opportunity, which they already have elsewhere — people will be constructive and pro-social online. They assume the general public has an active interest in issues of online privacy and identity.
And, in an apparent business flaw that’s been much analyzed already, they assume people will generously shell out money to support that interest, even if they see little to no personal benefit, and even if they don’t have to. Ello’s founders call it idealism. It looks a lot like naivete.
