Say Ello...

September 25, 2014 8:54 AM

Ello is a new social network, currently in beta, that's quickly gotten a buzz in LBGTQ, activist and POC circles because of its privacy policy. In contrast to Facebook, real names are not required, and the site promises not to sell ads, or sell data about you to third parties. But to some activists, Ello, in its current state of development, is actually worse than what it aims to replace.
posted by monospace (594 comments total)

Just got an email about this! Great job, Metafilter.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:56 AM on September 25, 2014

promises not to sell ads*
*until we have to find a way to monetize
posted by msbutah at 8:57 AM on September 25, 2014 [37 favorites]

Seriously. Ello is suddenly everywhere. I haven't known an insta-hype like this since the Segway.
posted by philip-random at 8:59 AM on September 25, 2014 [28 favorites]

"This days-old beta system doesn't do everything right now!"

"Oh, wait, they're working on it."

Don't use a beta product if you're not willing to accept it's not a full release. I am all for all those protections but I understand that a development product isn't finished yet and those things will likely come. That's why I joined, to help shape them.

I don't buy this whole Immaculate Service thing where they never make money, but it is interesting to watch it all come together.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:00 AM on September 25, 2014 [16 favorites]

But how can I, as a teen, interact with my favorite brands?
posted by The Whelk at 9:04 AM on September 25, 2014 [140 favorites]

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that something can be free.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:04 AM on September 25, 2014 [27 favorites]

I'd never heard of it before today but today it has appeared approximately eighty billion times on my Twitter feed, and now here.

I look forward to the future when everyone's talking about how evil Ello has become.
posted by bondcliff at 9:05 AM on September 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

Why would I want to start all over again? On a new, untested, and not widely adopted network?
posted by MrBobaFett at 9:05 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

How will it be funded? I've heard they plan to have fundraising drives like Wikipedia or NPR.

I dunno how I feel about that, so I'm Asking Metafilter.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:06 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

its adoption rate has been crazy high within my circle. id say that its already past the point where i could drop twitter and Fb and stay social media functional. thats something that G+, new myspace and diaspora could never even dream of, and its only been a few days of the new invite beta.
posted by young_son at 9:06 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

This is either my "Wait and see" or my "I cannot be arsed to even think about another bloody social network" face.
posted by Devonian at 9:07 AM on September 25, 2014 [21 favorites]

"Very soon we will begin offering special features to our users. If we create a special feature that you like, you can choose to pay a very small amount of money to add it to your Ello account forever."

So, microtranscations? Which I can totally see switching to Ello if it involves magic potions or possibly some kind of flying mount.
posted by Lorin at 9:08 AM on September 25, 2014 [13 favorites]

I don't know why anyone would use Ello instead of Tumblr, which doesn't really have a lot of ads, doesn't require you to use your real name, and is much less likely to disappear in a few years.
posted by oulipian at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

As an old school weblogging curmudgeon, this looks to me like just the next step in the MySpace-> Twitter-> Facebook-> Tumblr migration. I will note that they appear to be backing off on their "no porn" stance to handle the fortuitously coincident Facebook real names exodus of the various Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and other folks similarly concerned about privacy, and I assume that'll run until at least the next funding round or they have to find a payment processor.

I'm not sure what set of tools we need to develop so that we can actually take control of our own data and not simply be pumping our personal lives into a walled silo so that someone else can try to figure out how to exploit/monetize it, but I'm super interested in discovering that. And I'm trying to modify my own personal sites to interop with people in the Indie Web movement and figure out what else I can do towards that end.

Oh, and if anyone wants an invite, I'm having fun passing 'em out to friends of friends to see what that does to my social graph, hit me up.
posted by straw at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2014 [16 favorites]

It's the hip place to read Buzzfeed lists.
posted by Beardman at 9:09 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm over there with the same username, so feel free to say hey.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:10 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Smug, of-its-era start-up attitude: Ello sends note "we're in beta, no room for you yet, but please help tell others about us." Then they had the nerve to send a later email about their new privacy features and terms of service, even though they still hadn't granted me an account.
posted by twsf at 9:11 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

I think calling it in beta is a bit optimistic. The search function is crazy buggy, and it took me five minutes to figure out how to post something. Lots of people joining. Not a lot of interaction. It feels like when I signed up for G+.

(I'm @lownote there too. I think I'll have invites soon if anyone wants one).
posted by lownote at 9:12 AM on September 25, 2014

Is oh noes social network privacy invasion we are all being sold the lefty technorati equivalent of they're coming for our guns?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:12 AM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

suddenly everywhere.

and when I say suddenly, I mean, today is Thursday. I'd never heard of Ello on Tuesday and I tend to spend a pile of time online mucking around. Then yesterday morning, one of my hipper young friends made mention of it, with a bunch of his friends jumping on board all excited wanting invites from him. By late afternoon, even my older resolutely unhip friends were discussing it. I finally clicked a link to figure out what was going on and got a page that couldn't load ...

Then a few minutes later I noticed a sidelink elsewhere that was discussing the "actually worse than what it aims to replace" issue.

The notion of premature aging comes to mind.
posted by philip-random at 9:13 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

There was a too-soon NYT piece a few years back about creating social networks where your data belongs to you that I never saw anything about again.

What I really want is the Wordpress of social media: I want to post stuff on MY SITE and have it show up in such a way that my friends can read it.

Why can't that happen?
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:14 AM on September 25, 2014 [27 favorites]

Oh, I am very curious to see how they'll sell features to users. I might spend a dollar or two on an app, but if I'm actually using the service, my use will cost them more than a few bucks over the long haul.
posted by lownote at 9:14 AM on September 25, 2014

MetaFilter: pumping our personal lives into a walled silo so that someone else can try to figure out how to exploit/monetize it
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome at 9:14 AM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Is oh noes social network privacy invasion we are all being sold the lefty technorati equivalent of they're coming for our guns?

No.

Next question?
posted by Hizonner at 9:14 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

I didn't mean to suggest said privacy concerns don't spring from a legit place mind you. I'm just saying there's a bit of Chicken Little panic to it by this point.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 9:15 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

i've been on there since tuesday as xxcoeur66xx dunno what to do there tho D:
posted by xcasex at 9:15 AM on September 25, 2014

one thing ive been really almost shocked at is how seriously non sausage-fest it is. google utterly failed at this and i think its a big reason (of many) that g+ died in the crib. ello is basically tumblr/instagram scene rather than FB or twitter, and thats a really good thing.

probably the thing that cemented "ok this might be cool" was a girl called @boner posted the complete screenplay to shrek in one comment, stage directions and all, haha
posted by young_son at 9:15 AM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Is this the right time to note that the destruction of Google Reader actually made Facebook more powerful?

Because Google could and should totally be onto the task of creating open-source social media options, which they could crawl with their bots. And they're not.
posted by anotherpanacea at 9:15 AM on September 25, 2014 [18 favorites]

I'm skeptical: I've been sent several invites, and NOT ONE of them has made it to my gmail. I physically watched one sent to me from someone in the same room.

If it's that broken, it's not worth my time.
posted by pjern at 9:17 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm sitting waiting for the page that I'm supposed to get from the email invite a friend sent me to open. I can tell it's busy because it's slow as molasses.

(on preview: mine came to gmail.)
posted by immlass at 9:18 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm just saying there's a bit of Chicken Little panic to it by this point.

Except for the part where government and corporate entities messing with us and our data is in the news virtually everyday, and nobody is coming to take the gun owners' guns away to make them ride bicycles or whatever it is they believe this week.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:18 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Did you check your spam folder?
posted by jeffamaphone at 9:19 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I first heard of it yesterday, which leads me to assume my social group (mostly 30-40 year olds) isn't into it yet. I requested an invite anyway, but I'm not anxiously awaiting it.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:19 AM on September 25, 2014

I just really like that their faq page is called a wtf page instead.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:20 AM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

I only heard about it today, when Pinboard was tweeting sarcastically about it. So naturally I've requested an invite, although I know no-one on there at the moment.

I remain to be convinced about the whole "free to use, no adverts, no tracking" premise. It sounds great in theory, but what will happen when the realities of running costs kick in (even with microtransactions or whatever) or they get bought by Google for eleventy billion dollars?
posted by milkb0at at 9:22 AM on September 25, 2014

This would explain a lot of my Twitter feed recently (I've been taking a break from it and FB for about a week now).
posted by Kitteh at 9:22 AM on September 25, 2014

So, I was all set to say that this was a bad thing, and people were Still Not Getting It by buying in to yet another locked-in, centralized third-party service.

Well, I still think people are Still Not Getting It. But actually anything that fragments "social networking" wins, even if all the existing services are badly designed, brittle, abusable, and/or downright evil. It removes the expectation that you can just use Facebook and be done with it. Which opens the door for new systems that are actually better.

So great... I hope all the cool kids leave whichever one of these monsters is biggest this week. That's still Facebook, right?
posted by Hizonner at 9:23 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

The Geek Feminism list of wants for a feminist social network - what they want is Livejournal or one of the clones. Just let ONE of them get a nice slick mobile interface and maybe we can have it back.

Speaking of which...
posted by MartinWisse at 9:23 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

oh god I NEED THIS PLEASE SOMEONE SEND ME AN INVITE
posted by rebent at 9:23 AM on September 25, 2014

I want to post stuff on MY SITE and have it show up in such a way that my friends can read it. Why can't that happen?

I was thinking this recently too. What if Twitter or Facebook was a protocol, not a site? And then I thought, you mean like RSS?
posted by ctmf at 9:23 AM on September 25, 2014 [16 favorites]

All hype folks. Just got an email from them today beginning "Enhanced privacy features are coming to Ello very soon." Ain't no such thing as privacy features, either privacy is baked in with crypto or it's not. Oh. Did I mention no web app can offer privacy?
posted by jeffburdges at 9:24 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

(I am now @rebent)
posted by rebent at 9:30 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't know why anyone would use Ello instead of Tumblr, which doesn't really have a lot of ads, doesn't require you to use your real name, and is much less likely to disappear in a few years.

Tumblr has terrible-to-non-existent member-to-member communication features. What features exist are obscure, mysterious, and generally hidden from the default views. They strongly push everyone toward a model of posting and reposting -- e.g., if you want to comment on someone's post, you re-post it on your blog, adding your own comment. This makes it a place for sharing and re-sharing, but any semblance of real conversation is made very difficult.

Having not seen Ello yet, I'm assuming it's different on this front. But for all I know, it could just be an overhyped Tumblr clone with a different look and feel.
posted by treepour at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [14 favorites]

They don't seem to give much attention to things like making the browser back button work properly.

Created by seven artists and designers

That explains a few things.
posted by Space Coyote at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [14 favorites]

How will it be funded?

What is it doing? What does it want?
posted by octobersurprise at 9:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I find the number of friends who are jumping onboard as an (eventual) exodus from Facebook to be disheartening.

Ello might make it big, but that doesn't make it not a bad choice. A company that makes promises about, say, not being evil will eventually renege on those promises when the payoff is big enough -- if they go public, their shareholders will demand it!

If we're going to switch to another social network, it should probably be a decentralized one where we own our own data. That's not me saying we should wait for someone to build it for us, it already exists -- remember Diaspora? Yeah, they might not have taken off, but they're still around and still improving their network (which is, in my opinion, not yet a drop-in replacement for Facebook, but still has more features than Ello).
posted by Jonathan Harford at 9:32 AM on September 25, 2014 [12 favorites]

It's worth noting that one of the founders has other projects under his belt. Whether this is a recommendation or not it's something you'll have to judge for yourself.
posted by asterix at 9:32 AM on September 25, 2014

All hype folks. Just got an email from them today beginning "Enhanced privacy features are coming to Ello very soon." Ain't no such thing as privacy features, either privacy is baked in with crypto or it's not. Oh. Did I mention no web app can offer privacy?

It's very well to talk about crypto, but this is about a site for sharing information with other people. Basically the opposite of encryption.

We aren't trying to hide from state level actors, but it'd be nice to have polite conversations about the ball game last night (or the play, or the LoL match) without being monetized, and all the privacy implications that go along with it.

I'm as cynical as all the rest about whether or not they can resist the temptation to monetize (or rather requirement), but your perfect is the enemy of the good. If your response to people wanting to post messages on social networking sites is to say they should use PGP emails is missing the point.
posted by zabuni at 9:33 AM on September 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

I want to post stuff on MY SITE and have it show up in such a way that my friends can read it. Why can't that happen?

I was thinking this recently too. What if Twitter or Facebook was a protocol, not a site? And then I thought, you mean like RSS?

Well, if you only want your friends to read it, then you have to use authenticated RSS... and what is the easy way to authorize people to see your feed then?
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 9:34 AM on September 25, 2014

What is it doing? What does it want?

It's needs cannot be comprehended by your puny human minds!
posted by The Whelk at 9:36 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

I've never heard of this, and I submit that the world needs another internet social network about as much as the proverbial pontiff needs a nouveau chapeau.
posted by jonmc at 9:37 AM on September 25, 2014

Ahhhhh can I have an invite
posted by Quilford at 9:37 AM on September 25, 2014

Hey social networks!

just fyi I have some exclusive invites to the idiopath open beta. Act now if you want to try it out. For now, I will interact with your service for free. I have a strict policy of not revealing the secrets of one network to the others that sign up.

Come check it out!
posted by idiopath at 9:39 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Jpfed: indeed. Plus fine-grained per-post selectivity, not just access to feed/no access. Plus commenting/liking/etc functionality. RSS isn't there.

But it would be an interesting thing to work on with that as a model.
posted by ctmf at 9:41 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ello.co is so last week. If you really want to keep near the front of the race for life you need ello.com
posted by oulipian at 9:43 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

DM from enthusiastic social media ex-colleague: "You don't have an Ello account yet?! What are you, Amish?"

I did notice that the "manifesto" (eye roll) says "You are not a product.", which made me smile.
posted by Wordshore at 9:43 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

The solution to the Facebook-walled-silo problem isn't another walled silo. As Jonathan Harford notes, the solution is an entirely different model, based on syndication and subscriptions, like RSS. People syndicate their content (posts, photos, etc.) from any web server (whether that's a server they personally manage and control, or one of many competing service providers, as we currently have with email). Others subscribe to that content. And there's some kind of access control, so not just *anyone* can subscribe to your stuff.

The solution is a standard, open, interoperable protocol, like email, not another closed garden.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 9:44 AM on September 25, 2014 [39 favorites]

Yeah add me to the list of people who wants an invite pleeeeeassssssse. I need it because of reasons
posted by Librarypt at 9:48 AM on September 25, 2014

librarypt, send me a memail with your email-adress :D
posted by xcasex at 9:50 AM on September 25, 2014

I have no idea what to make of it so far, other than it vibes slightly positively to me in a "reminds me of mlkshk" sort of way and I love mlkshk. But I'm on there @joshmillard. (I also camped cortex as a redirect because I'm tired of other people grabbing cortex and then doing nothing with it.)
posted by cortex at 9:50 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

You don't need to send an email to get an invite. Just have them click “Generate Invite Code”, and send you the string. Go to https://ello.co/join and enter the code. Et voilà.
posted by Renegade Duck at 9:51 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I realized I was actually proud of myself for getting an Ello account before it showed up on MetaFilter.

With that, I also realized I am the problem I keep hoping the world will solve.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:51 AM on September 25, 2014 [13 favorites]

Philosophically, aren't we ourselves, as complex carbon-based lifeforms, always in a state of perpetual Beta?
posted by Wordshore at 9:54 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

(I'm @monospace. 'Ello.)
posted by monospace at 9:54 AM on September 25, 2014

I am @lyn_never (I am also @lynnever but that's just parked), and I have a few invites left.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:55 AM on September 25, 2014

Man, Daily Dot need to not have an icon like the Daily Mail icon.

Anyway, as a person highly desirous of strong pseudonimity more than true, encrypted-style anonymity, this appeals to my interest. But it's also a great reminder to have a look at Diaspora, or even one of the LJ clones. Anyone using those and able to compare?
posted by Drexen at 9:57 AM on September 25, 2014

I signed up. Seems massively non-intuitive, buggy as hell and largely incomprehensible. To me, anyway.
posted by Decani at 9:57 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Go to https://ello.co/join and enter the code.

Now I want to sign up just to stake out Ello Meno Pea.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:57 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

the interface confuses me but I am there as @kathrynt.
posted by KathrynT at 9:59 AM on September 25, 2014

I am @JohnLeavitt on ello cause BUWAHAHA I GOT THE NAME FIRST
posted by The Whelk at 9:59 AM on September 25, 2014

I should probably try to grab 'octothorpe' but I'm not sure that I care enough about "yet another social network".
posted by octothorpe at 9:59 AM on September 25, 2014

OK, super dumb question: how do I fucking POST something?! Enter doesn't work and I don't see a button.
posted by KathrynT at 10:00 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

And I just joined as @inturnaround.
posted by inturnaround at 10:01 AM on September 25, 2014

I am @sagrei on there and if you need invite codes, memail me.

I have no idea what this thing does or if I'll keep using it but as people have said upthread: god yes, I miss the good old days of Livejournal.
posted by cmyk at 10:01 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

@KathrynT - There's a post button that blends in really well with the background until you hover over it. To the right and below the post box.
posted by lownote at 10:01 AM on September 25, 2014

On my Mac, Command-Enter seems to do it. Maybe Ctrl-Enter on Windows/Linux?
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:02 AM on September 25, 2014

I am @davegoodman. Please add me so I can understand the point of it. I fear I may have just passed my grumpy internet man horizon.

Soon I shall be yelling at clouds (servers)
posted by Happy Dave at 10:02 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Further thoughts: it shows some innovation in the form but will need to be a lot more feature complete before it has a shot at a place on my Top Five list of clicker games.
posted by cortex at 10:03 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Also: I cannot stop thinking of the worm from Labyrinth.

"Ello."
"Did you say hello?"
"No, I said ello, but that's close enough."
posted by cmyk at 10:03 AM on September 25, 2014 [11 favorites]

oh fine I guess if anyone both has invites and knows my email address to send an invite then i will sign up
posted by poffin boffin at 10:03 AM on September 25, 2014

OK, thank you for the post box tip, now how do I search for someone? I type their name in the search box and then. . . . nothing happens.
posted by KathrynT at 10:03 AM on September 25, 2014

Secretly I'm hopeful this will be what I hoped Google Plus would be - a social network for Smart Internet People who I don't know in real life.

Then I figure, new MeFi style is sexy enough that maybe I can reinvest my mental energy here instead!
posted by Happy Dave at 10:04 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you hit return on that, it may take a moment or two to appear -- site's been slow with megahype hitting it.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:05 AM on September 25, 2014

Search is largely non-functional. I searched for a few people I knew were on it and it gave me very non-useful results.
posted by lownote at 10:05 AM on September 25, 2014

You literally can not make everyone happy with a social networking product. Anyway, ello will either find a way to monetize or shut down, like every business, and that will make more people unhappy.

You heard it here first.
posted by GuyZero at 10:06 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I will get an ello invite 30 minutes after everyone will be over it. I will make a single post then forget about it immediately.
posted by hellojed at 10:06 AM on September 25, 2014 [20 favorites]

yay thanks mr whelksie
posted by poffin boffin at 10:06 AM on September 25, 2014

I really want a plain text distributed social network based on RSS that will work on cheap phones.
posted by mecran01 at 10:07 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

nope hitting return does absolutely nothing, it's been eight minutes.
posted by KathrynT at 10:07 AM on September 25, 2014

This thread made me remember Google Wave. Remember Google Wave? Good times.
posted by bondcliff at 10:10 AM on September 25, 2014 [17 favorites]

@marcas is me. Might as well try a new handle for a change.
posted by Stynxno at 10:10 AM on September 25, 2014

and I submit that the world needs another internet social network about as much as

Long before I ever bothered to open a Facebook account, I wondered aloud (and often) where the Open Source Facebook was. By which I think I meant, where is the place (virtual) that I can hang with friends, family, network (and friends of, and friends of friends of), share pix and jokes and have discussions, arguments, whatever, organize meetings etc -- where is the version of this that doesn't ultimately exist just to make some shady rich people even richer than they already are, and as such, I can trust with my information, my passion, my public self?

And then a few geek friends weighed in and clarified that the sheer IT scale of what I was asking just couldn't be offered by an entity that wasn't ultimately profit driven. Welcome to the internet circa 2011.

So geeks -- how does Ello stand up to this?
posted by philip-random at 10:11 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm in! Feel free to friend me: @ryanschultz

I love coasting on newly expanding social networks. I had a blast with Google+ and I'm still there. The key to a successful G+ experience is to follow a lot of people (up to 5,000). Facebook is still the 800-lb. gorilla but I still prefer G+ for the quality of the people I encounter there.
posted by Quiplash at 10:12 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

The fact that search seems completely broken kind of sucks. How the hell am I supposed to add people?
posted by capnsue at 10:12 AM on September 25, 2014

Seems legit, I can't imagine a bunch of social media activists all jumping on to a trend that turned out to be half-baked and then forgetting about it in three weeks.
posted by strangely stunted trees at 10:13 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

@progosk (thx Lyn).
posted by progosk at 10:14 AM on September 25, 2014

Do folks still have any extra codes? I'll trade a Learned League invite for one.
posted by troika at 10:14 AM on September 25, 2014

Pouring one out for tent.is.


@me3dia, of course.
posted by me3dia at 10:16 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'll be happy to generate invites for whoever, so send me a MeMail if you're hurtin' for one. I'll get you hooked up and then probably immediately unfollow you because I don't know you, man, leave me alone.
posted by komara at 10:17 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

OK I did what everyone else is doing and signed up so I could get my name. I'm at @alxp. I probably won't write too much on there but who knows. Maybe I'll follow everyone in this thread and it can be my internet buds social network.
posted by Space Coyote at 10:19 AM on September 25, 2014

My ideal social network site would have a setting that reads friends posts, and if they have political content, keeps it out of my feed, but let's family news and similar innocuous stuff through.
posted by drezdn at 10:19 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Please send me an invite before some crumb-bum gets my name.
posted by zippy at 10:19 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Hizzoner: So great... I hope all the cool kids leave whichever one of these monsters is biggest this week. That's still Facebook, right?

From a research standpoint, I'd be curious to know if you can identify the "cool kids" by the number of linked users that sign up from one of their invites. How many people could constitute the group that can bring an onslaught of new users to this service?
posted by dr_dank at 10:22 AM on September 25, 2014

Yes, I also have invites--drop me a memail with your email and I will share as many as i can.
posted by divka at 10:22 AM on September 25, 2014

anyway, i am capnsue. friend me or whatever.
posted by capnsue at 10:25 AM on September 25, 2014

It's so plain and simple to use that I am panicking, why do all the buttons do exactly what they said they would do, this is so unfamiliar.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:25 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

@robes - Having a 5 character handle makes me feel like a l33t haxx3r.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:27 AM on September 25, 2014

where is the version of this that doesn't ultimately exist just to make some shady rich people even richer than they already are, and as such, I can trust with my information, my passion, my public self?

Facebook make an operating income out of the data it has to sell targeted ad placements.

Now imagine giving all that data to someone who doesn't make any money with it, but they still have lots of expenses because servers and bandwidth isn't free... eventually their VC funding runs out and now all they have is a huge pile of data and a bunch of bills. That, to me, seems like a much worse situation. Facebook wants its users to keep coming back so they have to balance selling ads with not annoying users. If you're about to shut down though, there's really no need to treat users' data in accordance with the users' desires... you might as well sell it as a CSV file.

A social network without a working way to make money is honestly way more dangerous for user privacy than Facebook or Twitter.
posted by GuyZero at 10:29 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I have no idea whats going on so I'm going to revert to my normal response and post pictures of my hair
posted by The Whelk at 10:29 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I could use a shot of self-esteem today so I'll just put it out there that I would like an invite, please memail me if you would like to give me one.

if I don't get any takers I can wallow in wounded self-pity, which is the next best thing to feeling valued by one's peers!
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Why don't I already have an invitation? I'm so middle-aged and uncool. Maybe I should put on some khakis and a polo shirt, listen to Hootie and the Blowfish, and go post pictures of my kids on Facebook.
posted by Area Man at 10:35 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

I got an invitation a couple of days ago, poked around a bit. The interface strikes me as way too many designers and a lack of user experience people. But I'm @tavella there if anyone wants to link up.
posted by tavella at 10:36 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm @lemurrhea naturally. Let's see how this goes.
posted by Lemurrhea at 10:37 AM on September 25, 2014

memail me for invites anyone
posted by KathrynT at 10:37 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm just happy that I got in on a network early enough to snag @cpi.
Take that, Communist Party of India!
posted by Theta States at 10:40 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

memail me for invites too. it seems like twitter in black and white. i'm @osi
posted by osi at 10:40 AM on September 25, 2014

I got on on Tuesday and poked around a bit, but I get ello about as much as I get reddit right now. Which is kinda, but not really.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:40 AM on September 25, 2014

'Developed By Designers'

seems about as workable as

'Designed by Developers'
posted by lumpenprole at 10:42 AM on September 25, 2014 [30 favorites]

How do you park a name?

(I'm under my twitter handle. Folks can find me pretty easily. I'm friends with flex.)
posted by klangklangston at 10:42 AM on September 25, 2014

What I really want is the Wordpress of social media: I want to post stuff on MY SITE and have it show up in such a way that my friends can read it.

Why can't that happen?

We have that. It's called LiveJournal and DreamWidth. I'm not seeing this service doing anything that they don't do.
posted by happyroach at 10:42 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

This is strongly reminiscent of those heady days of gmail invites except invites don't seem to be in short supply. It's chronologically collapsed, compared - more of an instantaneous uproar then inevitable dead silence.
posted by komara at 10:44 AM on September 25, 2014

Somebody invite me. I am fascinated by how these things sprout and grow and I need more internet kitties in my life. Yes.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 10:46 AM on September 25, 2014

What I really want is the Wordpress of social media: I want to post stuff on MY SITE and have it show up in such a way that my friends can read it.


This has been a burning idea in the back of my head for at least a few years: content could/should be separated from social aggregation, where the person subscribes their content into the aggregator.
posted by rhizome at 10:46 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

It's behaving well right now, no slow-downs or outages. Are the US users all having naps?

I switched usernames for a change of scenery: casa_esperanza. MeMail me if you're still looking for an invite.
posted by tracicle at 10:49 AM on September 25, 2014

Worth noting, that "not all activists are impressed" link is by mefi's own divabat
posted by the agents of KAOS at 10:49 AM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

I'm sad that the mutual-friending-for-access model of LJ/DW isn't available on tumblr or anywhere else I guess.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:50 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I missed out on Lost and The Sopranos and Spaceballs and the Ice Bucket Challenge and DAMMIT I AM NOT GOING TO MISS OUT ON THIS EPHEMERAL SOCIAL FAD.

I am @puffycatpants.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:52 AM on September 25, 2014 [8 favorites]

"What I really want is the Wordpress of social media: I want to post stuff on MY SITE and have it show up in such a way that my friends can read it."

Once upon a time, Facebook's API allowed this through the "notes" feature — I could post to my blog and FB would syndicate it. If I recall correctly, I could even do this without making the post itself visible to everyone. First they crippled that feature, so it would take days for content to show up, then they just stopped supporting it entirely.
posted by klangklangston at 10:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

It will be interesting to see what happens with this. There's been a very visible migration among the queers, drag queens, DJs and other more-than-one-identity folk. That they were even able to get a meeting with facebook about the real names policy is kind of amazing, but it's bullshit that Zuckerberg's reasoning is that real names bring accountability. Seriously?

Not the mention the irony of a not-real-name twitter account (now suspended) being the one to take on "ridding Facebook of perverts, sickos and bullies using fake names? Simply tweet us their URL and we'll RT" is just fucking gross. Facebook can barely be arsed to take actual harassment by "real" people seriously, but accounts by performers like Heklina get instantly suspended because it's not her legal name? Fuck. You.

I wish there were wider discussion of this aspect, rather than the new hotness ello (where of course I have an account because hey, I don't want someone else taking my handle!).
posted by rtha at 10:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Today, I am one of the cool kids. @BullOctorok
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
posted by Theta States at 10:55 AM on September 25, 2014

"I'm sad that the mutual-friending-for-access model of LJ/DW isn't available on tumblr or anywhere else I guess."

I'm glad it's not. One of the (many many) reasons I left Facebook was the forced reciprocity model - there are one-sided relationships in real life. If I want Joe B. to be able to read my posts then I should be able to allow that without having to mark him as a friend, meaning I am forced to suffer all of his posts.

I heard that they got better about this somehow (friend vs. follow perhaps?) but then everything fell further apart with paid posts and uncertainty that things you were writing would ever be seen by your followers, etc. I think Goodreads is doing it correctly right now - you can follow someone's reviews without ever friending them.
posted by komara at 10:57 AM on September 25, 2014

Yesss, yet another place to post pictures of my cat!
posted by sonmi at 10:57 AM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

The lil eyeball counter also counts each of your own views upon a refresh, making me very introspective.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:57 AM on September 25, 2014

holy shit I finally made Metafilter

(I'm the "but to some activists" link at notyourexrotic)
posted by divabat at 10:58 AM on September 25, 2014 [17 favorites]

If I want Joe B. to be able to read my posts then I should be able to allow that without having to mark him as a friend, meaning I am forced to suffer all of his posts.

He can read your posts without you having to friend back, unless your journal is friends-locked for every single post. Otherwise the default view for every post is public, no friending, mutual or otherwise, required.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:00 AM on September 25, 2014

Thanks for the invites. Am @fluffybattlekitten.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 11:01 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

OH WAIT you were talking about facebook, and yes that sounds terrible and you are well rid of it.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:03 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm @sparklemotion, though I guess I kind of regret not going for some 2 or 3 character handle to show how much of an early adopter I am.
posted by sparklemotion at 11:05 AM on September 25, 2014

lownote: "I think calling it in beta is a bit optimistic. The search function is crazy buggy, and it took me five minutes to figure out how to post something. Lots of people joining. Not a lot of interaction. It feels like when I signed up for G+.

(I'm @lownote there too. I think I'll have invites soon if anyone wants one)."

LJ *still* doesn't have a proper search function and that site sure as hell ain't beta (what's the greek word for "dead"?)
posted by symbioid at 11:05 AM on September 25, 2014

Would love an invite, if anyone has one to spare.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 11:09 AM on September 25, 2014

Tumblr has terrible-to-non-existent member-to-member communication features. What features exist are obscure, mysterious, and generally hidden from the default views. They strongly push everyone toward a model of posting and reposting -- e.g., if you want to comment on someone's post, you re-post it on your blog, adding your own comment. This makes it a place for sharing and re-sharing, but any semblance of real conversation is made very difficult.

Oh my god, thank you for articulating my Tumblr feelings. Sometimes I just want to comment. And it is a pain to do so, so I don't. I love what Tumblr users have done, but I am not a fan of the setup as-is.
posted by emjaybee at 11:09 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

And as for the "it's beta, don't be so Chicken Little about it":

Ello's entire marketing premise is privacy. The reason it's had a serious jump in signups the past week is because a lot of the queer/trans/POC/activist/performer/sex worker circles signed on as a replacement of Facebook, assuming that its No-Real-Names-Needed policy and their claims of "privacy" means that it will definitely be private and safe. Failing to have any actual privacy functions built into the release from the get-go is a failure on their mission, unless they are conflating "privacy from marketers" with "privacy from harassers".

I mucked around it for a day and had wondered if some people who have personally twisted and abused me via social media (and who are acquaintances or friends with the QTPetcetc groups I just mentioned) had joined, and if so whether there was a way to block them or restrict them from adding me. NOPE.

Hence my post.

What utterly baffles me about the reception to Ello is how the very same people who would critique any sort of pop culture or media product to death, who are super skeptical about everything, ESPECIALLY if it comes from straight/cis/white/men, are making excuses for Ello (made by presumably-straight cis white men) and hiding behind "well it's beta". Hardly any critical analysis in any sort of depth they've employed previously. The entranced way they've been talking about it, believing promises and marketing copy rather than actually testing out the functions built, is frankly creepy.
posted by divabat at 11:10 AM on September 25, 2014 [16 favorites]

Folks who are looking for a self-hosted-but-federalized-and-syndicated-to-followers experience may be interested in Indie Web Camp.
posted by Inkoate at 11:10 AM on September 25, 2014

I've even more eager to jump on knowing that I'll have an instant network of MeFites.

You people make everything nicer (or grar-ier, as the case may be).
posted by JeffK at 11:10 AM on September 25, 2014

It's easy to change your handle on a whim. @marcas no longer works for me. I am now @mas. @marcas no longer exists. An easy way to kill an identity I guess.
posted by Stynxno at 11:12 AM on September 25, 2014

if anyone else wants to join the e-gold-rush that "claiming your ello name," please memail me.

divabat: nailed it.
posted by raihan_ at 11:12 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

ello friend(ster)!
posted by nikoniko at 11:13 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'll take an invite, if someone wants to memail me one.

Even though I'll probably use it like twice, can't stand being outside the glass looking in....
posted by Chrysostom at 11:16 AM on September 25, 2014

Grar, grar, grar, get off my lawn!
posted by drklahn at 11:20 AM on September 25, 2014

I got an invite from @osi (thanks!) and am now on Ello as @edlundart. I kind of enjoy adding people by clicking the Noise button, so maybe you want to add me as Noise to you. Or not.
posted by edlundart at 11:20 AM on September 25, 2014

Diaspora has already arrived at its final destination: the answer to a "Trivial Pursuit" question. Diaspora changed nothing.
posted by DWRoelands at 11:22 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm @flameo if you want to, uh, connect? Is "friend me" FB exclusive? Whatever. Going back through the thread to find fellow Mefites now.
posted by emjaybee at 11:23 AM on September 25, 2014

symbioid: "what's the greek word for "dead"?"

νεκρός
posted by Chrysostom at 11:23 AM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

Ugh okay fine, I'll put out my hat for an invite... Anyone? Anyone?

(I don't get it - this went from zero to sixty in two days flat, and it feels like it'll be done before the week is over.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 11:24 AM on September 25, 2014

And there goes invites. They took them down.
posted by Stynxno at 11:30 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm fascinated and annoyed that people see Ello as an alternative to Facebook. Their follow/friend mechanism is based on Twitter or tumblr, not Facebook.

My gut says that's just not going to hit the same buttons as FB.

My friends have been saying "as soon as they have events, Ello is my new main jam." Would twitter or tumblr ever have events? I'm not sure. Again it just feels like a different way of being.

Also if I write on someone's page it shows up in the feed of anyone who follows me. So my feed has a bunch of @ conversations that are 100% noise to me.

I wish them the best and hope they turn into what everybody wants them to be. But everybody that I know wants Facebook minus the creepy. This is something else.
posted by wemayfreeze at 11:31 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Just sent you MeMail, troika, and if anyone else wants an Ello invite please send me a note yourselves.
posted by Songdog at 11:31 AM on September 25, 2014

Copy/pasted from the invite page:

We are slammed!

Ello has gone viral and we are temporarily freezing invitations for new users. This allows us to make sure that Ello remains stable as the network continues to grow.

Check back here for updates — we promise to give you more invites as soon as we can!

posted by tracicle at 11:34 AM on September 25, 2014

how do i make it stop telling me things
posted by poffin boffin at 11:35 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm on as @bluffcityjk, and about to friend the shit out of all of you.
posted by JeffK at 11:36 AM on September 25, 2014

It's been a while since I've read any gobbledygook articles about social networks being driven more by tastemakers than by functionality but Ello might be a good test.

Facebook has been systematically passing off all the cool, thirsty, sexually-desirable, at-risk poor people for years.

All my musician and artist and small business owner friends have been looking for an alternative to Facebook ever since they started filtering out posts, my activist homies have been increasingly wary about Facebook's lax attitudes about privacy, and lack of transparency with regard to their own policies and data mining. My sex worker and drag queen and trans friends and allies are all getting thrown under the bus because Facebook doesn't care about the safety they feel in living under a (less) traceable name or drawing lines between their public/private lives.

And so many of my women friends have had perfectly vanilla pictures deleted and their accounts deleted for the suggestion of suggestiveness and found no help when they were being harassed, stalked or abused by a person or a page on the site.

I have used a performer name for more than half of my life. It's not hard to connect my legal name to my performer name, but I don't want potential employers to connect me that easily to every loudmouth thing I've ever said, for the middle-of-the-road Democrat and Republican politicians in my close family to be connected to my extreme radicalism and unsavory friends, for the abusive ex who stalks my girlfriend to find our home address that easily (although his nutso ass puts in work and probably knows at least as much about me as Mark Zuckerberg has access to).

So I hope Ello takes off. If it doesn't I feel like a lot of people will resign themselves to Facebook. If it does, I'm curious what weirdo shit Facebook will do to monetize Instagram.

And overall, I wish ANYTHING online was as good at helping small bands promote themselves as well as ugly old MySpace did in its prime.
posted by elr at 11:37 AM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Damn it, I just got the same message as tracicle.
posted by Songdog at 11:37 AM on September 25, 2014

I'm signed up and now have a username dilemma. Do I want my real-name-as-username-which-matches-my-email username, blog name or same-as-twitter-handle username (which is blog name + 'blog' at the end). It really depends on what this becomes and whether it'll be an outlet for personal-ish stuff or more semi-professional curiosities. Seeing as it uses the @ form of username I'd want to match handles but it kind of looks dorky.

So right now I'm on there as @audiograins but I'm primarily in wait and see mode now.
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:41 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Myspace was so important for so many people I know, mostly because we all learned really fast what shitty awful barely-functional HTML/CSS looked like and could take that knowledge with us into the real world where it would be 100% wasted and ignored by bosses and managers who want to make the corporate site "pop".
posted by poffin boffin at 11:43 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Actually the impression I get is that this will be the new myspace...sort of. I get the sense that it'll be primarily the creative communities that get on board and it'll be pretty much ignored by the masses. Maybe it'll be more for visual creatives than musicians but interested to see how the pieces land.
posted by TwoWordReview at 11:47 AM on September 25, 2014

If you had invitations, they're gone. Sorry. (quoth @scruss on ello)

If you need something to play with, I have some Keybase invitations.
posted by scruss at 11:53 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

well, for the most part, I can't even figure out how to friend people whose usernames I know, but i'm on it as likeatoaster if you want to find me.
posted by likeatoaster at 11:54 AM on September 25, 2014

I parked my name and then stalled out trying to update my profile page -- uploading images doesn't seem to persist. Maybe it's an issue of server use, like the invite freeze?
posted by rewil at 11:54 AM on September 25, 2014

To anyone in the "Boulder Tech Scene":

If you took a look at this and thought "Man, this looks like something Todd and Lucien would design", yep.
posted by sideshow at 11:55 AM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think I might be too late, I blame my RSS reader for not updating as fast as the good old days. If anyone still has a invite I'm interested just out of curiosity if they re-open registration later. Thanks.
posted by chrono_rabbit at 11:58 AM on September 25, 2014

I parked my name and then stalled out trying to update my profile page -- uploading images doesn't seem to persist. Maybe it's an issue of server use, like the invite freeze?

I had the same issue, but the image eventually showed up.

(I'm @brundlefly)
posted by brundlefly at 11:59 AM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm on there as @chatongriffes. Add me!
posted by chatongriffes at 12:00 PM on September 25, 2014

Straw: "I'm not sure what set of tools we need to develop so that we can actually take control of our own data and not simply be pumping our personal lives into a walled silo..."

I'm convinced that a combination of ubiquitous terabyte+ space on mobile devices, coupled with always-on internet will pave the way for social apps that will be self-contained - no need for centralized servers - and everyone will peer with the people they want to be involved with and can browse (and grant browsing to) others as they like.

I am also convinced that an open source app will emerge which does this elegantly without compiling personal info or hawking ads.

We'll see, I guess...

posted by mmrtnt at 12:01 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

"reminds me of mlkshk"

24 views, 0 shares, 18 hearts, 1 comment.
posted by jsavimbi at 12:03 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

"I'm not sure what set of tools we need to develop so that we can actually take control of our own data and not simply be pumping our personal lives into a walled silo..."

I'm quite fond of pencil and paper myself.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:05 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: pumping our personal lives into a walled silo
posted by brundlefly at 12:06 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

By the way, for those people interested in the LGBTQ* / POC / activist usage, if you haven't read any of danah boyd's work you're missing out.

She hasn't commented on ello specifically, but has done a lot of work on issues surrounding minority / youth representation on social networking sites, and the like.
posted by Lemurrhea at 12:07 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

@mikurski here.
posted by mikurski at 12:10 PM on September 25, 2014

I've made a major update on the "but some activists" link, if you're interested.
posted by divabat at 12:10 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm on as @huck500, feel free to add!
posted by Huck500 at 12:10 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

you know, to add to the pile-on, can someone send me one?
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 12:12 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm on there as skycrashesdown, though I can't do anything with my profile until tomorrow. Happy to add or be added by any MeFites!
posted by skycrashesdown at 12:12 PM on September 25, 2014

Anyone out there with my email, please invite me!
posted by Mister_A at 12:13 PM on September 25, 2014

There's a super-good reason to switch - just for a change.

To get rid of old friends you don't want any more. Because you're sick of facebook and want to send them the message, "We don't need you."

The work to switch is marginal... if I have your email address... otherwise, do I really know you?

If it works, millions will switch. Hah!
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 12:14 PM on September 25, 2014

Therer's no invites for now, they shut the invite system down due to the massive influx of new users. I'm @ryanschultz, feel free to add me.
posted by Quiplash at 12:15 PM on September 25, 2014

Much better than their original name, Evillo.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:17 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Maybe it'll be more for visual creatives than musicians but interested to see how the pieces land.

I kept hoping New!MySpace would turn out to be a place where you could easily post creative things like videos, but it is not. Don't know that I expect that of this thing, it is confusing. I may try in a different browser because my settings are all wonky and posting is weird. (Using Firefox). But I am also supposed to be working so maybe later.
posted by emjaybee at 12:18 PM on September 25, 2014

I've ended up there as ominous_paws and am collecting mefites as fast as I can, feel free to add.
posted by ominous_paws at 12:18 PM on September 25, 2014

If I headed this up, I'd have the username guv'nah, so i'd be ello gov'nah
posted by symbioid at 12:20 PM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

I am there as @mikepop - not sure what it will turn out to be but I am posting doodles for now.
posted by mikepop at 12:21 PM on September 25, 2014

(it's mainly going to be booze chat, I think, if that's your kind of thing)
posted by ominous_paws at 12:26 PM on September 25, 2014

If anybody wants an invite you can MeMail me and I'll give it a shot when invites open up again.
posted by brundlefly at 12:32 PM on September 25, 2014

This feels both more trivial and less performative than Twitter, and as far as I can tell through the cloudy glass of the interface that so far hates every browser I've tried to use it on, it lacks the sharing-photos-of-the-kid-with-Aunt-Cindy functionality that makes Facebook more or less mandatory for anyone who hasn't fully managed to slough off the noxious creeper vines of familial obligation, so yeah stream-of-consciousness babbling is what we're all agreeing to use this for, right?

I posted about my lunch, and that felt right.
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:32 PM on September 25, 2014

ah, an invitation would be great, if someone has one to spare.
posted by jbc at 12:35 PM on September 25, 2014

There are only three types of social internet services:

* Massively decentralized services that eventually collapse or are infiltrated/killed once they are associated with porn, spam, piracy, and illegal activity (USENET, Napster, Gnutella)

* Massively centralized services which have to monetize in sketchy ways to pay investors and hire people to combat porn, spam, piracy, and illegal activity (Twitter, Facebook)

* Little niche sites that hobble along for years begging for donations, ever-complaining how no one cares about privacy anymore, and die of cirrhosis.

* Email (ok, four)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 12:40 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm on there as @briannaorg, wondering how long it'll last. I'm at that sweet spot where I have just enough "Friends" to keep the feed moving but am running out of old photos to post in lieu of, you know, opinions and stuff.

I save my opinions for AskMefi.
posted by annathea at 12:43 PM on September 25, 2014

I like how you can drag a person's avatar to Friends or Noise to add them.
posted by Celsius1414 at 12:45 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm going to live tweet the season premiere of Scandal on Ello because I have no idea how social media works.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:46 PM on September 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

I first heard of Ello roughly 24 hours ago and now I have 40 friends linked there. I don't mean "friends", either; I mean that forty of my real-life actually-in-person friends are signed up already, and the number keeps growing.

I like their attitude and I like the spectacular rate of uptake. We'll see whether the people behind the service can handle the growth.

Until Metafilter's fundraising event a few months ago I'd never have considered paying for a social networking service, but now I feel like I'd happily sign up to pay $5/month for an ad-free Facebook replacement, in perpetuity, as long as the people I wanted to communicate with were all there.
posted by Mars Saxman at 12:47 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

But does it have Farmville?

(Seriously though, I'd love an invite if they ever start giving them out again. This is crazy, like Gmail invites all over again.)
posted by davros42 at 12:57 PM on September 25, 2014

Isn't being slammed a bad sign? I mean, I think the cool kids all host via auto-scaling Amazon whatsits these days, don't they?
posted by maxwelton at 12:58 PM on September 25, 2014

I signed up; if anything to squat on my name in case it actually takes off/is a viable service.

Now, I'm the Clockwork Angel of the site!

No, really. I'm @clockworkangel
posted by spinifex23 at 12:59 PM on September 25, 2014

Nobody ever reads my phlog.
posted by symbioid at 1:00 PM on September 25, 2014

annnnd its closed again
posted by young_son at 1:01 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I agree with divabat about manifesti—what a hideously self-important term for some hackish ad copy justifying whatever pernicious business practices the company cares to foist upon an unsuspecting public.
posted by Mister_A at 1:03 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

After using it for a few hours I've decided I'll treat it like I treat Twitter: post inane babble until I have a new photograph to display, then link to my Flickr and wave my arms and go "LOOK! LOOK! PRETTY THING FOR EYEBALLS OKAY!"
posted by komara at 1:03 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

(I also updated my post to have the original original post up top, since having it with updates on top was messy)
posted by divabat at 1:03 PM on September 25, 2014

I'll also send an invite (when they open up again) to anybody who wants one. Just MeMail me.

Feel free to add me, I'm @ladyarkady.
posted by arkady at 1:05 PM on September 25, 2014

Invites just came back for me and I sent out a few ...
posted by Songdog at 1:25 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm on as @chrysostom. Say hi, if you like.

Thanks for the invite, Songdog!
posted by Chrysostom at 1:26 PM on September 25, 2014

A friend who is a queer trans woman of color (and is the spark behind the Ello-skeptic train) is working on a social network created and run by and for queer & trans people. They're looking for contributors!
posted by divabat at 1:27 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

oh it does latest first comments ....erp
posted by The Whelk at 1:43 PM on September 25, 2014

Re: divabat's mention of collectqt, a tweet. I chuckled.
posted by GuyZero at 1:48 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

My invites are currently open and working - happy to invite anyone who MeMails. I'm there as @violetu.
posted by VioletU at 1:50 PM on September 25, 2014

@obliviscor. Thanks, KathrynT!
posted by you must supply a verb at 1:51 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I believe I have caught up on people that MeMailed me during the unfortunate 'no invite period' and gotten everyone an open door. Still more than happy to do that for whoever else is interested.
posted by komara at 1:52 PM on September 25, 2014

FWIW, none of the queers/trans/drag queens who are moving to ello to at least see what's what are under any illusion that it will Solve All The Things nor are they flailing in gratitude to the saviors founders of ello. They are looking for place where they can name themselves as they like, communicate with their friends and fans, and promote their acts and art if that's their thing. They are not n00bs at the internet; some of them may not stick around ello if it ends up not working for them.

But facebook's "no you have to use your real name especially since some asshole on twitter notified us that your real name is not the name literally everyone knows you by" policy is pure bullshit and is being selectively enforced, and people are rightfully pissed about it and ready to find somewhere that will not do that.
posted by rtha at 1:56 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Okay, I know that above I said:

"After using it for a few hours I've decided I'll treat it like I treat Twitter: post inane babble until I have a new photograph to display, then link to my Flickr and wave my arms and go "LOOK! LOOK! PRETTY THING FOR EYEBALLS OKAY!""

But then it turns out that you can embed multiple images in a single post [like so] and that's actually a lot better-looking than Twitter for this one particular purpose, so ... that's nice. Maybe not quite as nice as Tumblr's flexibility in the same area, but they've had a little longer to get their act together.
posted by komara at 1:58 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'd like an invite if anyone has any left. Sounds fun to poke around in.
posted by Tevin at 2:03 PM on September 25, 2014

On as @mroben. Thanks, arkady! Not sure if I'll end up using it, but it's nice to know I got the username I wanted.
posted by mroben at 2:10 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm mostly following Mefites on 'ello, so, uh, not sure what I'm doing there that I couldn't be doing here.

I had a "no more social websites" policy for a while. I'm not sure what it is about this one that made me sign up, when I've skipped Tumblr (although I RSS some feeds), Instagram, etc.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:10 PM on September 25, 2014

Apparently they raised a round of venture capital in March so expect the "third-party information sharing" to come any minute now. BUT HEY NO ADS!
posted by zerolives at 2:14 PM on September 25, 2014

Thanks to a kind member I've managed to get a invite and registered under @cynical. It's a little liberating to see all the open usernames for once instead of endless "Username Already Taken" prompts.

P.S. Feel free to PM me for any invites too.
posted by chrono_rabbit at 2:19 PM on September 25, 2014

rtha: FWIW, none of the queers/trans/drag queens who are moving to ello to at least see what's what are under any illusion that it will Solve All The Things nor are they flailing in gratitude to the saviors founders of ello.

Really? Because that's 99% of my friends list, and that's predominantly the response I have seen.
posted by divabat at 2:19 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

But facebook's "no you have to use your real name especially since some asshole on twitter notified us that your real name is not the name literally everyone knows you by" policy is pure bullshit and is being selectively enforced, and people are rightfully pissed about it and ready to find somewhere that will not do that.

Facebook informers? Some days I despair.
posted by Area Man at 2:22 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I missed a grand opportunity to change my username to the more site appropriate "ellojed" but now that's gone
posted by hellojed at 2:24 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well Tevin was taken so I'm @Setevin. Thanks, you must supply the verb!
posted by Tevin at 2:26 PM on September 25, 2014

@RedOrGreen, thanks SongDog!
posted by RedOrGreen at 2:31 PM on September 25, 2014

@hellojed: I think you can change your username under settings? I was looking around for useful features and I found it there.
posted by chrono_rabbit at 2:33 PM on September 25, 2014

Much more on Ello funding and their VC board member from (MeFi's own) Andy Baio. $435,000 seed round in January.

I'm hopeful some freemium model will make for a reasonable business; I'm so fucking tired of ads-funded things. But I doubt freemium would generate the kind of revenue to justify the traditional VC-backed route.
posted by Nelson at 2:37 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

@mmrtnt, thanks Lyn!

Also, if it's not taken, someone might like "Ello Biafra"

posted by mmrtnt at 2:44 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

The corpse in the library: "I'm mostly following Mefites on 'ello, so, uh, not sure what I'm doing there that I couldn't be doing here."

Posting pictures inline? Having off-topic conversations?
posted by komara at 2:45 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Mn the last time I saw Andy Baio's name he was telling us how poop kept the tent where it is
posted by The Whelk at 2:46 PM on September 25, 2014

Looking through some of these profiles makes me realize I need to really up my soft-lighting profile picture game.
posted by Tevin at 2:46 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm so fucking tired of ads-funded things.

- television
- radio
- newspapers
- magazines
- cultural events
- concerts
- sporting events
- public transit
- internet search engines
- social networking sites

It must be tough making it through the day.
posted by GuyZero at 2:48 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Are there nice people here with invites to share? Can you hook a fella up?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:48 PM on September 25, 2014

Really? Because that's 99% of my friends list, and that's predominantly the response I have seen.

Yup. Different friends, I guess! Don't get me wrong - enthusiasm and hopes are high. But for a lot (most?) of the people I know, it's really about being able to keep the damn name you choose, the one most people know you by, without someone like Zuckerberg getting all preachy about how real names bring accountability, because we all know that's full of shit.

From my experience, it's not like facebook is all that responsive to complaints about harassment and bullying from other facebook users, so the fact that ello doesn't yet have a system in place doesn't make much of a difference on that score.
posted by rtha at 2:50 PM on September 25, 2014

Signed up as @snickersnacks - thanks komara! I imagine my content will be similar to how I use Twitter, possibly with more design and less vidja games.
posted by Snacks at 2:51 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I would be into taking a peek. Any invites?
posted by hoodrich at 2:52 PM on September 25, 2014

I would also like an invite, if anyone has such an invite to spare.
posted by Pink Frost at 2:56 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm so fucking tired of ads-funded things.
It must be tough making it through the day.

I survive somehow. AdBlock helps a lot on the Internet, as does Tivo for television programming. FWIW I helped build the ad system for a Leading Internet Search Engine, so I have some personal experience with the ad-funded business model.

Ello's very manifesto is a repudiation of advertising-funded systems. And I sure wish them well in finding some alternative. But starting with a $435k seed round from a VC firm is discouraging, because the usual path from that is a $5M series A, and a $20M series B, and a $100M series C, and that comes along with a story about $100Ms to justify a $billion exit price. I'm curious to learn more about how they expect to fulfill the goals of their manifesto.

For a contrasting view on how to build a sustainable (small) Internet lifestyle business, see Pinboard Turns Five.
posted by Nelson at 2:57 PM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

Also, just to directly address Nelson, since I quoted him there: Nelson, I don't really men that as a shot at you personally. I get that ads are tiring and that internet ads are significantly different from a Safeway flyer in your mailbox. I too read AdBusters but I get it from my local public library so I don't even have to pay them! Ha, take that AdBusters!

But there's this trite reflexiveness to being anti-advertisement that sort of gets to me. Advertising is a perfectly legitimate funding model and is no worse in many cases than freemium or pay-per-use or whatever - they all have their pros and cons.

Clearly you can hate ads all you want, I ain't the boss of anyone. But it's somewhere between pissing in the ocean and pissing in the wind.
posted by GuyZero at 2:57 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

add me to the desires-an-invite list.
posted by ghostbikes at 2:59 PM on September 25, 2014

OK, I caved. Didn't want anyone else to be @devonian on there. Thanks, violetu. Have absolutely no idea what to do next, though, so pls all feel free to noise or follow or dogbuttsniff or whatever analogy these people deem kewl.
posted by Devonian at 3:01 PM on September 25, 2014

i don't get why people seem to ascribe to the ello founders the motivations of facebook's. ello is getting a lot of attention, but they weren't expecting it and didn't seem to be really promoting themselves. they created a little network of creative people, and it seems like they expected it would stay kinda small. they don't necessarily want to be huge. amongst my friends who have joined, it seems like there's a real effort to be patient with something new and scaled down, and there seems to be an intentionally positive tone to it all, which is refreshing after the clickbait rage that seems to dominate facebook anymore. (the histrionic 'activist' reaction posted here is funny, because it embodies much of what people are sick of on facebook, aside from the whole thing where facebook wants to merge you down to a single identity that they can more easily manage and sell.)

the site people seem pretty cool so far, and they're expressing a simple philosophy that seems to view users as human beings. anyone who can reach into what they are expressing and try to reinterpret it in the most cynical, hateful terms is probably someone ello is just fine without, and they are welcome to stay away and keep pushing that vibe on facebook, where it will earn plenty of 'like' currency. i suspect many people checking it out won't stay long at all; the expectation some have had that they were going to jump onto a fully built site (although they tell everyone they are not) that already contains all their friends and all their desired functionality is silly. the site is a chance to rethink how much of that functionality actually connects us and seems to be giving many people an opportunity to re-examine how mindful they are about their online connections. i like what the site represents. i don't think everybody needs to join it.
posted by fallacy of the beard at 3:03 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I still gots plenty invites to share - MeMail me if you're not yet in.
posted by komara at 3:04 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm curious to learn more about how they expect to fulfill the goals of their manifesto.

I assume it doesn't involve a billion-dollar valuation. Honestly, that sort of thinking is as much of the problem as ads themselves are. Maybe they'll be a Pinboard where they can cover costs and build a financially stable community.
posted by GuyZero at 3:06 PM on September 25, 2014

After taking @robes I immediately regretted my choice - I'm glad they shut down invites otherwise I'd have ended up with multiple strings of nonsense, all of which I would forget the passwords for and would never use again. Never had that problem real name signups, so, uh, I guess good jorb Facebook?
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:06 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

(the histrionic 'activist' reaction posted here is funny, because it embodies much of what people are sick of on facebook, aside from the whole thing where facebook wants to merge you down to a single identity that they can more easily manage and sell.)

As the writer of said 'histrionic' section - could you please explain? I'm not sure how you're parsing my request for safety features as wanting Ello to be more like Facebook, asides from pointing out that at least Facebook has a useful Block option.
posted by divabat at 3:07 PM on September 25, 2014

Um one of the dudes who started "simple, beautiful & ad-free" Ello has a brand page for his bike shop on it?
posted by oulipian at 3:18 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Apparently just having the hashtag #GamerGate on your Ello post gets it removed
posted by divabat at 3:21 PM on September 25, 2014 [9 favorites]

I don't see the problem with a brand page so long as it is entirely op-in. Which that would seem to be.
posted by Tevin at 3:21 PM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

Paul also did Kid Robot, so expect a brand page for that as well.
posted by sideshow at 3:23 PM on September 25, 2014

Is your email visible to your friends on ello? I want to join, but I want to be pseudo-anonymous and I don't want to have to create a new email address.
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:24 PM on September 25, 2014

email addresses are not visible
posted by you must supply a verb at 3:27 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

but it wasn't a request. it was a ranty accusation, full of bolds and italics and gross overstatement, applied to a site that to this point was rather a small network of creative people, and which acknowledges that it's still trying to implement even the most basic functionality. and then when capping it off with the whole presumably-straight white cis men thing, where identity politics has absolutely no bearing in terms of whether one agrees with the site's philosophy, took it to the point of near-parody. ello hasn't demonstrated or given reason (and hasn't even had time to yet) for us to think it is anything other than what it says it is trying to be. it's ridiculous to act like you're being victimized by it.
posted by fallacy of the beard at 3:30 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thanks, komara for the invite!
posted by jazon at 3:32 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

fallacy of the beard: the observation about the site makers' demographics compared to tue current influx of users wasn't something I came up with, and even so it's a common and valid concern for many people who are marginalised. Many sex workers were alarmed at the "we know it when they see it" verbiage of their porn policy until they got that fixed.

The announcement about the implementation of the policies came after I made that post; that post was one of the main impetus(es) for them to actually prioritise privacy and safety. Before that it was nowhere on their radar.
posted by divabat at 3:33 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

i done been invited, thanks komara!!!
posted by ghostbikes at 3:35 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yep, thanks, komara!
posted by Zeinab Badawi's Twenty Hotels at 3:36 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Cool, thanks you must supply a verb. Looks like I can relive the glory days of livejournal!
posted by tofu_crouton at 3:39 PM on September 25, 2014

oh it does latest first comments ....erp

My experience is that it does "no particular order" comments. (kinda like g+ does with posts???)
posted by aubilenon at 3:40 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

robocop is bleeding, it looks like you can change your username pretty easily? I signed up with my real name, then changed my mind and changed to my currently preferred goof-name (@hustlecat, add me, ya dingus) and then invite-joined myself so i could squat my real name. seems pretty flexible at the moment, which i like.
posted by ghostbikes at 3:52 PM on September 25, 2014

holy shit you can put an animated gif as your profile pic!?
posted by ghostbikes at 3:54 PM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

(and it continues to be animated, is what im sayin')
posted by ghostbikes at 3:56 PM on September 25, 2014

Before that it was nowhere on their radar.

well, not really. you don't indicate that you even asked them before you started, and you jumped to a lot of conclusions that were only assumptions. you have no idea what was on their radar, or when it hit their radar, or actual knowledge of what was deliberately designed, only that they responded to a request made about it by someone else--a request you could have made yourself. perhaps you assumed that, like facebook personnel, they wouldn't have bothered to reply or just didn't care, but the notes (personal notes to me and friends) they've been sending out seem to indicate that they're very responsive. taking five minutes to do that might have saved you the embarrassment of overreacting, not to mention flattering yourself that your ridiculous tone changed their minds about anything.
posted by fallacy of the beard at 4:08 PM on September 25, 2014

wait i think i lied it is inconsistent
posted by ghostbikes at 4:09 PM on September 25, 2014

Before I wrote that post I went through their various policy documents and plans for feature updates, and that's what I was basing it on. I was also basing it on other people's discoveries and discussions of lack of features.
posted by divabat at 4:09 PM on September 25, 2014

I do not feel like I overreacted, so I am not embarrassed at all. My post helped generate a lot of discussion and awareness about privacy holes (including a lot of interest by the media), and some of this interest is what led eventually to Ello making their plans public - including actually publishing a list of Rules, having a Report This email address, and updating the list of features to include blocking.

I don't think I can authoritatively say all of this was because of me, but it did certainly play a big part.
posted by divabat at 4:11 PM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

I await the deluge of breastfeeding moms who will arrive on ello's shores any day.
posted by GuyZero at 4:14 PM on September 25, 2014

Actually - with all the hype of Ello (I'm seriously seeing it on my FB page from someone who, while somewhat tech savvy, I wouldn't consider an uber-nerd/geek in tech circles), I'm already forming an anti-Ello reaction, like a Hipster would.

I think it's MeFi's fault for exposing me to this before I saw it elsewhere now I'm all like "Pfft, I was into it before you were." Even though I'm not even in it yet -- still waiting, Ello. LOL. ELLOL.
posted by symbioid at 4:18 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oof, I wish Ello the best but if they are being funded with venture capital nobody should be getting really attached, like other people are pointing out. VC doesn't just want to make back a small but sustainable profit (which freemium can achieve), it wants to make back oodles of money to make up for the rest of the ventures that break even or totall fail.

Ello's team can really mean what they are saying but VC is going to call the shots when it sees money being made. There is a vast graveyard of VC backed companies getting bought out (generally for aquihire) and then getting shut down shortly after. And it's unlikely the VC is driven by warm fuzzies about data privacy and ad free pages.
posted by foxfirefey at 4:25 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

"robocop is bleeding, it looks like you can change your username pretty easily? I signed up with my real name, then changed my mind and changed to my currently preferred goof-name (@hustlecat, add me, ya dingus) and then invite-joined myself so i could squat my real name. seems pretty flexible at the moment, which i like."

Did you have to use a separate email for that?
posted by klangklangston at 4:30 PM on September 25, 2014

From Divabat's post:

Because the people I most want to avoid know my aliases. They are friends with people I know on Ello. They might already be on Ello (I’d be surprised if they weren’t) and are totally open to following me, reading me, tagging me, commenting on my posts. Hell, they can even find me through our mutual friends - any mutual activity pops up on their Friends feed.

I don't really understand how this is that different from Tumblr, though? I mean, on Tumblr there are no filters, people can find you through tags, reblogs etc. You can block tumblr accounts, but it's trivial to create a new Tumblr. It's not that I think that your points are invalid- blocking and filtering/friend-locking are all great features, especially for people who need and want privacy, and I'd be way more interested in Ello if it had them. But your post calls it a "huge and more immediate safety risk", and I just... don't see how it is more than Tumblr? or really any other social media site (apart from completely locked down Twitters/Facebook/LJ, etc... and quite frankly even those just need one person who secretly screencaps your stuff and posts it eleswhere, or someone with access to their computer that they leave logged in... I once had a private AIM conversation printed out and handed to me by a parent who had a keylogger installed on my friend's computer, and this was back in the 90's). No matter how many privacy features there are, putting your information online is *always* a risk.
posted by insufficient data at 4:35 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thank you divabat for being an awesome critic and critical thinker of this whole thing. It is great to see someone voice their well researched and well thought out ideas regarding something that has obviously gone massively viral on the internet (and you managed to get in before most people, so even more kudos).

Your insight on the diversity aspect was especially awesome to see, as a lot of the "owners" of these social media platforms tend to have a very narrow view of the scope of just how these issues are not trivial to a lot of people, and create an artificial barrier to entry for people who do not fit their "target profile" for their user base.

I also love that you point out one of the main reasons a lot of people feel that they "have" to be on social media; i.e. the need to have an online presence, and the tools that social media provides for them to promote themselves in their chosen lifestyle. Performers and artists especially feel that they HAVE to have some presence, and some means to interact with some kind of "fanbase" in order to succeed. Of course, it is also how online community building exists today, and it is vital to have places online where people can interact with THEIR social groups, and not be harassed by hateful people.

Of course, this gets me to where I start ranting about how I miss when all you had to do was post an image of the poster for your event in the few relevant LJ groups that were a) local to your venue or performance, and b) really simple annouce-lists that people knew they could go to in order to find out what was going on. With the shit like Myspace and Facebook, where you have to go create an event, fill out a huge amount of metadata (date, time, venue, blah, blah, blah) and THEN go and INVITE EVERYONE IN THE WORLD, a majority of which aren't even on the same fucking continent as you, and of course that's a huge PR no-no.

And of course, now, if you want to find out if some band like is touring and might be playing near you, you have to go search for them on Facebook, figure out if it's actually their Page or some Fan Page, subscribe to it, then search through their postings and see if they posted a tour schedule, and if your lucky, the fucking platform wont decide that you don't need to see it because of their stupid ass algorhythm trying to extort blood from every fucking rock.

I read somewhere that Twitter was planning on instituting a similar algorhythm as well. I can't wait to read all the articles about how "great" that shit is, and how they'll start letting users "promote" their tweets, just like Facebook did. I also have a feeling that Ello will institute that feature very, very, very quickly, if they aren't pulling in ad revenue.
posted by daq at 4:40 PM on September 25, 2014 [4 favorites]

Ello! Feel free to find me as moda500 :)
posted by starscream at 4:41 PM on September 25, 2014

1. Tumblr has a Report This Post function (admittedly, it's buggy - I've had posts of mine deleted because I talked about being harassed.

2. I can password-protect my Tumblr blog.

3. I can to some degree block Tumblr users from sending me asks.

I get that other social networks are not always that hot on privacy either, but that's the point - Ello's trying to market itself as some sort of leader on privacy but it's no better (and in some ways worse) than others. If they and their fanpeople weren't making such a big deal about Privacy Yay TM then it'd be just another site, la de dah. But right now everyone I know wants a FB replacement and they're thinking Ello will be It.
posted by divabat at 4:44 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Don't know if this makes me either reasonable or insufferable, but no social networking platform could gain real trust from me unless it was both open source and P2P. Surely that's harder than it sounds, but the problems being discussed here could only be solved by that or something similar. What we're really angry at here is the reliance on any particular group of servers. As far as I can tell, the depth of unity between corporate America and the tech industry would be milder if not for that.
posted by IShouldBeStudyingRightNow at 4:44 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

And by "huge and more immediate safety risk" I was more mentally comparing it to Facebook since that's what my social circles were pitting it up against. On FB I can block, report, and filter, which has helped a great deal.
posted by divabat at 4:45 PM on September 25, 2014

Am I the last to get on here and ask for an invite? Just to reserve oneswellfoop as a username (I already have it for @gmail.com and @yahoo.com, hint hint)
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:46 PM on September 25, 2014

ahh, okay, if it's trying to market itself as more pro-privacy (I just saw the "doesn't require real names" as the big push, which didn't necessarily mean pro-privacy in my mind) then yeah, for sure. And it's definitely something worth pointing out to people who are used to Facebook's privacy options and might be expecting the same options that they shouldn't be cavalier about posting similarly sensitive stuff on Ello.
posted by insufficient data at 4:50 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm so fucking tired of ads-funded things.

- television
- radio
- newspapers
- magazines
- cultural events
- concerts
- sporting events
- public transit
- internet search engines
- social networking sites

It must be tough making it through the day.

yeah, it f***ing is. Wearying.
posted by philip-random at 4:52 PM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

Did you have to use a separate email for that?

yes
posted by ghostbikes at 4:52 PM on September 25, 2014

can I just..
I Really do not want to get in to tonepolicing or blaming-the-victim territory or anything.
but isnt it a bit premature to jump on a project that is a few months shy of the wild to be feature complete?
posted by xcasex at 4:57 PM on September 25, 2014

On the other hand, pointing out the necessity for those features might bump them up in the priority list.
posted by insufficient data at 5:00 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

xcasex: Is it so hard to ask that certain core features be present from the very beginning, especially if it's part of the feature set you're trying to promote?

My friends and peers celebrated Ello as some bastion of safety. I looked into it and saw how unsafe it was for my purposes, and wrote about it. What I wrote went unexpectedly viral. That was all - it wasn't meant to be a GRR ARGH HATE ELLO FOREVER GRR thing.
posted by divabat at 5:00 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

THE LOWERCASENESS OF THIS LINKED COMMENT AND THE SMALL SIZE OF THIS METACOMMENT DOES NOT ADEQUATELY DESCRIBE HOW FUCKIN' EXCITED I WAS TO SEE MY POST LINKED AS AN FPP ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG
posted by divabat at 5:02 PM on September 25, 2014 [7 favorites]

I have just signed up as @kabloomers. I'm one of those jerks who doesn't have a consistent username across sites.
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:12 PM on September 25, 2014

My friends and peers celebrated Ello as some bastion of safety. I looked into it and saw how unsafe it was for my purposes, and wrote about it. What I wrote went unexpectedly viral. That was all - it wasn't meant to be a GRR ARGH HATE ELLO FOREVER GRR thing.


your pop culture reference-fu is humbling, <3 bad robot.
but yes, i think i understand your point of view better now :)
posted by xcasex at 5:13 PM on September 25, 2014

"mrbill" on there, of course. I'm so predictable.
posted by mrbill at 5:14 PM on September 25, 2014

I seem to have a few invite codes left. If you want, MeMail.

And to everyone I replied to earlier about needing an email address, it turns out I didn't, I just had a temporary dumb.
posted by cmyk at 5:16 PM on September 25, 2014

but isnt it a bit premature to jump on a project that is a few months shy of the wild to be feature complete?

(huge detailed analysis deleted) ON PREVIEW: what divabat said.
posted by daq at 5:18 PM on September 25, 2014

It looks like I have quite a lot of invite codes so memail me if you need one.
posted by mikepop at 5:23 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm @triggerfinger. Thank you cmyk for the invite!
posted by triggerfinger at 5:26 PM on September 25, 2014

I am @andrhia. I'm cautiously optimistic about this -- not that the owners or investors could resist TEN BILLION DOLLARS and do all the things they've said they'd never do. But now that Twitter's not respecting the curation choices you've made, and Facebook is what Facebook is, Ello is a not-yet-shark-infested harbor to jump to until The Perfect Thing is one day built.

I maintain that Perfect Thing is going to be social media as a public utility, and not a private corporation at all. Or as suggested upthread, an API or standard rather than a service. One day.
posted by Andrhia at 5:30 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Ello Founder Says VC Funding Is No Big Secret: ‘That’s Silly’.
posted by Nelson at 5:37 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I look forward to finding a friend or two, then adding them on facebook after ello flops - just as I have with wave/G+/buzz & twitter & LJ (though still I LJ, always and forever til it or I die).

I just imagine one more social network graveyard.

I have to admit the text box is nice, and what I'd hoped G+ would have offered instead of just cloning FB with their shitty tiny space, so that was refreshing. It's nice it's not UBER HUGE like LJ decided to do in what seems to be a rip-off of Tumblr style.

I got added by some Lutheran dude and I have no idea or clue how or why this person sent me the invite - I thanked them for it, and I let them know that we might not get along in the future and I'm trying to be polite and sensible now, but a forewarning that I can be vulgar... (not to say angry and judgemental, and a bigot against institutionalized religion).

So do these invites just pop up emails to people that want one and you get a batch and you send them invites? I just don't understand how or why this dude added me/sent me an invite (unless one of you are going to a Lutheran Seminary and saw me here, in which case, hi?)
posted by symbioid at 5:37 PM on September 25, 2014

Symbioid - I'm the Lutheran d00d that sent you that invite.
posted by Stynxno at 5:40 PM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

L00theran?
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:02 PM on September 25, 2014

LOLutheran
posted by Stynxno at 6:03 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the invite, Straw... now I have some invites... send some mefi mail if you want one.
posted by Huck500 at 6:05 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

can i get a hail satan up in this m^H
j/k.

but ill echo the sentiment above, ive still got invites so memail me and i'll send em out as i get them. :)
posted by xcasex at 6:07 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

@ricochet_biscuit might very well me be, is all I'm sayin'.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:08 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm on there as Layers9, and I have five invitations if someone wants one. Memail me. I still can't figure out how to post, and how to access previous posts. It ain't intuitive!
posted by Agave at 6:09 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

@sublimity, if y'all are so inclined.

Yeah, totally not intuitive and the search function is nonfunctional. Sounds like they are absolutely swamped, though, so I'll bet the servers are whelmed.

I'm taking a network analysis class starting in October with focus on social networks and their uses/properties, so I'm pretty curious to see how ello unfolds in the weeks to come...
posted by Sublimity at 6:22 PM on September 25, 2014

I requested an invite on the site, but if anyone has one still to pass along...
posted by bastionofsanity at 6:25 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm on there now too thanks to KathrynT!

@alexlu
posted by Conspire at 6:31 PM on September 25, 2014

i will send u one, one sec
posted by poffin boffin at 6:32 PM on September 25, 2014

bastionofinsanity, check your MeMail
posted by brundlefly at 6:33 PM on September 25, 2014

the young rope-rider, have sent you an invite.
posted by cmyk at 6:34 PM on September 25, 2014

@griphus y'all
posted by griphus at 6:35 PM on September 25, 2014

One more who wouldn't say no to an invite. I'll even send a lovely picture or something as a thanks.
posted by ambient2 at 6:36 PM on September 25, 2014

I've created an account as subbes - https://ello.co/subbes - and would love it if peopleadded me. I can't find anyone using the useless search.
posted by subbes at 6:37 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

ambient2: memail me your address. I'll send you one!
posted by Stynxno at 6:38 PM on September 25, 2014

Thank you!
posted by bastionofsanity at 6:38 PM on September 25, 2014

Sure. I'll take an invite.

I was an early Facebook adopter (my UID is "only" 6 digits), and defended them for a long time until they actually turned into the cartoon-villians that people had been accusing them of being all along. The "real world identity" social network was a neat idea, but it's run its' course, and is, in hindsight, rather problematic.

Coincidentally, I actually find G+ to be rather nice. It sucks as a marketing platform, which is a feature, rather than a bug. I like that Google actually has some sense about showing me the full range of posts from the pages that I choose to follow. Yes, I want to see the posts from my co-op, even though they're technically a "commercial" entity, and haven't paid for ad space.

Here's to... something else. We need it.
posted by schmod at 6:42 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

If anyone else has any invites left, I too would like to take part in the downfall of western civilization. And my cat needs more exposure.
posted by triage_lazarus at 6:52 PM on September 25, 2014

@dragons here.
posted by lazaruslong at 6:53 PM on September 25, 2014

Also interested in an invite if anyone has any left! I don't have a cat or any lovely photos to send but I can send you a photo of a cat.
posted by Defenestrator at 6:56 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

Defenestrator, check your memail.
posted by cmyk at 6:58 PM on September 25, 2014

would love an invite if any are still floating around
posted by billyfleetwood at 7:00 PM on September 25, 2014

Scruss, thanks a bunch. My cat's not grateful, but then again, he never is :)
posted by triage_lazarus at 7:01 PM on September 25, 2014

I would love an invite if any are floating about as well.
posted by pipian at 7:03 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm on ello as strass

I'll be friending people from this thread at some point
posted by Strass at 7:10 PM on September 25, 2014

I have one with your name on it billyfleetwood. Check your memail.
posted by Defenestrator at 7:13 PM on September 25, 2014

ello: the Mefite social network.

If I had a kersquillion dollars I would absolutely throw some into creating a Social Media Made By Mefites, because a lot of people in this thread have had brilliant ideas and I wish they could happen.
posted by cmyk at 7:15 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Man.

You can be ugly, but usable, and therefore forgiven.
You can be unusable, but beautiful, and therefore forgiven.

But you really can't be both.
posted by Defenestrator at 7:15 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm @lossless. You can MeMail me if you need an invite. Site seems to be running slow at the moment.
posted by shortfuse at 7:18 PM on September 25, 2014

I am @conniptions over there and have invites if anyone wants. PM me.

FWIW I do hope that Ello team people have read about and are working on solutions to divabat's concerns. This kind of thing will be absolutely key to its long-term success. I am personally privileged enough that I can go ahead and play about on beta-Ello without worrying overly much about such things directly, but not everyone is so fortunate. The introduction of suitably robust privacy / protection features at an early stage would do much, I think, to make Ello be a contender for number one Not FB Not Twitter place people feel safe to be social on. And those things should *absolutely not* be premium features, but defaults. Let posting videos / animated gifs be pay-for stuff. Frankly I'd pay a small premium *not* to have to see videos / gifs etc by default. That's the kind of way I'd like it to go.

Meanwhile, it's early days.
posted by motty at 7:29 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

Say what you want about the simplified black-text-on-white-background design, but it's definitely an extremely accessible design - I'm sending some invites to my blind friends who will definitely find the layout a welcome relief compared to the noisy layouts of most other social media websites.
posted by Conspire at 7:32 PM on September 25, 2014 [2 favorites]

I am on here?
posted by grobstein at 7:44 PM on September 25, 2014

The Whelk: "Mn the last time I saw Andy Baio's name he was telling us how poop kept the tent where it is"

Hmmm? I see Andy/Waxy showing up in posts relatively frequently.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:30 PM on September 25, 2014

Oh, speaking of Andy, here he is on ello writing about the problems of ello's funding.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:53 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

the Lutheran d00d is coming from inside the house
posted by threeants at 9:15 PM on September 25, 2014

relevant to gamergate thing above, which says the censoring is fake
posted by xcasex at 9:25 PM on September 25, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'd be grateful for an invite and promise to hoot triumphantly upon receipt.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 9:25 PM on September 25, 2014

Oh, hell. If anyone has a spare invite, let me know.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:33 PM on September 25, 2014

SEARCH FUNCTION WORKAROUND

(Discovered by flailing.)

Paste the handles you are wanting to search for into a post. Post it. Those handles become live, you can click on them, and then go to their pages and add them as friends.

By which I mean, just post "@flameo" if you're looking for me into a text post. Once posted, you can click on @flameo and find me. Or whoever.
posted by emjaybee at 9:48 PM on September 25, 2014

Looks like they have a system outage at the moment. Status page.
posted by Celsius1414 at 9:49 PM on September 25, 2014

you can just go to your own homepage and replace your own name with a name from this thread, and then populate your list from their follows
posted by poffin boffin at 9:50 PM on September 25, 2014 [3 favorites]

Yeah, of course that happens right after I send some invites to friends.
posted by brundlefly at 9:50 PM on September 25, 2014

looks up bad robot

boo about fakery! I did wonder if that was the case, and should have gone with my instinct. oh well, thanks for the update, will correct on my side.
posted by divabat at 9:51 PM on September 25, 2014

hehe yep

Ello, there's a lot coming your way, if you do well. The big social networks will compete with you, try to crush you. Users will badger and blame you. Press will misquote, villianize, and oversell you. Governments will threaten and pressure you. Mysterious forces will DDoS you and hunt your users' data. Well-meaning(ish) assholes will announce your security flaws in public. Enraged people will publicly claim you're a CIA, NSA, or FBI front company. Moles will try to work for you. Downtime will threaten you. Actual mentally ill people will threaten you. Toxic communities will blame you for their problems. Media will blame you for your toxic communities. The code won't scale. The revenue model won't be quite right. The hosting will be problematic. People will blame you for bigotry, hate, and even aiding human rights abusers and criminals.

...and that's just what happens if people love you.

--quinn norton
posted by fallacy of the beard at 9:52 PM on September 25, 2014 [6 favorites]

relevant to gamergate thing above, which says the censoring is fake

Yeah, that seemed like pretty obvious bullshit considering that there are no such formatted tags on posts afaict.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:53 PM on September 25, 2014

I would be delighted to have an invite. I have a gmail account.

Though, here's the thing - once I join, it may stop being at all cool. Sort of like the way I can make it rain by going camping. It's a knack.

Thanks. MeFi is swell.
posted by theora55 at 10:39 PM on September 25, 2014

I'm @lmgm on there, and I'm doing my best to queer up the place. Still grappling with the search function that does not function, though…
posted by LMGM at 10:46 PM on September 25, 2014

Sort of like the way I can make it rain by going camping.

I know some really nice campgrounds here in California you should totally check out
posted by aubilenon at 10:52 PM on September 25, 2014 [5 favorites]

[I]t’s quite telling that this group of coders and designers decided it wouldn’t be fucking embarrassing to go forward with this product with so so so little diversity on their team. That wasn’t a deal-breaker for them. Demographic diversity is closely tied to a diversity in perspectives and ideas. Like, if this group was even a little more diverse they would likely have known better than to make a social site live without a block button. As @interdome said, "if a social network can't figure out that it will need a block button on its own, I don't have much hope for it's survival."

As it goes, Ello creator Paul Budnitz said, "we built Ello for people like ourselves".

This is yet another example of social media built by designers, coders, and entrepreneurs, but no central role for those expert in thinking about and researching the social world. The people who have decided they should mediate our social interactions and write a political manifesto have no special expertise in the social or political. I’m pretty tired of social technologies being treated as far more technology than social, where the coders and designers run the thing and those who study social relations, study sex and gender and race and sexuality and identity and culture and power and domination and vulnerability and resistance and everything else hope to get our opinions heard later on.

- Nathan Jurgenson, who is building off Joanne Mcneil's quote "If your team isn't even as diverse as the starship Enterprise from 1966, you aren't building the future."
posted by divabat at 10:56 PM on September 25, 2014 [10 favorites]

If your life is too exciting, you can follow me there as maxwelton.

(The picture of our dogs will probably be the only thing I post successfully for the next 15 [x] minutes [x] hours [x]days [x]weeks [x] months [ ] years.)
posted by maxwelton at 11:37 PM on September 25, 2014

I'd like an invite too pretty please.
posted by SarahElizaP at 12:43 AM on September 26, 2014

Check your mail, SEP.
posted by ambient2 at 12:58 AM on September 26, 2014

I'm @SarahElizaP on there and I'm going to add all of you.
posted by SarahElizaP at 1:02 AM on September 26, 2014

Has anyone registered Oodbye.co?
posted by Devonian at 1:03 AM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

I can't believe how bustified this site is for how much people are raving about it. my entire facebook feed is nothing but posts about it, and it barely works. The search is still broken, photos seem to fail at uploading or get randomly deleted, the mobile view basically doesn't work on the iphone browser because it expects you to swipe left and right... which are the forward/backward shortcuts if you're even vaguely near the edge of the screen, and more. I know it's "beta", but there's barely any functionality here even ignoring the bugs.

Can you even private message properly? it didn't seem like it when i tried it, and it also seemed like that would just only show up interspersed with normal "newsfeed" posts. There don't really seem to be notifications.

I snarked earlier that it's like someone took everything i don't like about tumblr and twitter functionality/UI/UX wise and combined it all into one site. Which is to say, i bet this is going to be huge.

I'm also vaguely bitter that my friends got badass handles like acidburn and crash_override and i was just completely uncreative and happy to get a 3 letter username that's my initials.

divabat: What utterly baffles me about the reception to Ello is how the very same people who would critique any sort of pop culture or media product to death, who are super skeptical about everything, ESPECIALLY if it comes from straight/cis/white/men, are making excuses for Ello (made by presumably-straight cis white men) and hiding behind "well it's beta". Hardly any critical analysis in any sort of depth they've employed previously. The entranced way they've been talking about it, believing promises and marketing copy rather than actually testing out the functions built, is frankly creepy.

this this this this

all of the loudest, most skeptical and critical people i know who never shut up about how creepy facebook/google/etc are to the point of almost sounding like WTC 7 truthers or chemtrailers or flouride-is-killing us types(which... some of them are, but thats a whole other can of worms) just jumped into this with seemingly little to no critical thought, and just point at the wtf page/"manifesto" when you ask why they're so suddenly ok with it.

what's to say the entire thing isn't a honeypot, or they aren't going to pull a big switcheroo at some point or whatever?

I mean on one hand it shows how desperately tired of facebook people are, but on the other hand it's like REALLY guys? you're basically responding to a random person walking up to you in a bar, handing you a glass, and saying "here drink this" with "ok".

how quickly a bunch of offbeat subcultures/communities jumped on this site is weird. I almost feel like someone needs to make something that "goes viral" like this that is malicious, just so that people will start shifting their brains out of neutral before they jump in feet first day 1 on something like this.


Also, divabat, that's a pretty sick burn on Nathan's part there with relation to the fact that only a bunch of nerdy white dudes wouldn't understand why you need a block button. That omission really makes this feel more like some web/graphic design final project rather than you know, an actual product designed for real people to use in the real world.
posted by emptythought at 3:05 AM on September 26, 2014 [8 favorites]

If anyone still has a spare invite, I wouldn't mind one.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:31 AM on September 26, 2014

I just created an Ello account; mine's adjo (mostly as my initials were, as always, taken, and it didn't feel like something official and serious enough to have some other variant of my taxname attached).
posted by acb at 3:51 AM on September 26, 2014

Any more invites floating around?
posted by emmling at 4:23 AM on September 26, 2014

I'm officially boycotting this thing until someone tells me what it's for in which case I will beg for an invite.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:33 AM on September 26, 2014

what's to say the entire thing isn't a honeypot

Well if it is, what are they going to get? My ello@[personal-domain] email address? Not too concerned about spam there. Or maybe they'll take my info and sell it to harvesters - but I'm already on facebook so that road has not just been tread but is via publicaed.
posted by Lemurrhea at 4:37 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Potomac, it's for this.

Anyway, see if any of these still work, courtesy me (@scruss):

1. judge-sleep-out-escape
2. king-this-tremble
3. lips-severely-court
4. ought-table-love
5. yet-whoever-let

posted by scruss at 4:44 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

scruss I used #4, thanks! I'm @ou
posted by oulipian at 4:59 AM on September 26, 2014

I'm @timmoydaen and have invites left. Just send me a MeMail if you want one.
posted by Timmoy Daen at 5:10 AM on September 26, 2014

Diaspora has already arrived at its final destination: the answer to a "Trivial Pursuit" question. Diaspora changed nothing.

Why is that? I don't really know the nuts and bolts stuff but it seemed like a great idea.

Anyway, I'm late to the thread. I'm not on Facebook but if anyone still has an invite i'd like to give this a try. Thanks!
posted by Room 641-A at 5:12 AM on September 26, 2014

most of my invites posted above are still active, Room 641-A
posted by scruss at 5:28 AM on September 26, 2014

Thanks, scruss! I'll pay the favour forward if anyone wants an invite - memail me.
posted by hannala at 5:43 AM on September 26, 2014

So, they seem to be applying some sort of contrast filter to the profile images that you upload.

Not exactly a fan of that...
posted by schmod at 5:55 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

> Apparently just having the hashtag #GamerGate on your Ello post gets it removed

Saw this just now: Ello Has NOT Been Banning #Gamergate Posts — That Screen Grab Is a Fake
posted by rtha at 5:56 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Okay, I followed everyone who gave a name above. Now entertain me, dammit!
posted by Chrysostom at 6:51 AM on September 26, 2014

So, if i want to post pictures, do i upload them to Ello or upload them somewhere else and link them on Ello?
posted by rebent at 6:51 AM on September 26, 2014

I can't believe how bustified this site is for how much people are raving about it. my entire facebook feed is nothing but posts about it, and it barely works. The search is still broken, photos seem to fail at uploading or get randomly deleted, the mobile view basically doesn't work on the iphone browser because it expects you to swipe left and right... which are the forward/backward shortcuts if you're even vaguely near the edge of the screen, and more. I know it's "beta", but there's barely any functionality here even ignoring the bugs.

I've been on ello for a couple of weeks. It started to emerge on my social media radar after a bunch of people came back from Burning Man, and I'm willing to imagine some scenario where one (or many) of the ello original cabal went to that Thing In The Desert and tech demo'ed it to a bunch of people*, and that became one of the things that got ello to have critical mass once the initial outrage over sherpas and full service camps got vented in BM discussion groups and dissipated into attention ephemera

(* -- I think it's now obvious but unsurprising that a consequence of having Internet access on playa is not just that FB feeds are inundated with event invites for Extreme Desert Cocktail Balls, but that Burning Man will basically turn into a bohemian version of Yet Another Tech Scene Conference where people can elevator pitch their project in the default world and whip out their phone to a slumming incubator investor to do an impromptu tech demo while a giant pufferfish shooting fire and lasers out of its spikes rolls by in the background)

But I could be making all of that up. In fact, I am making all of that up, but I'd be curious if I was at least partially right.

Anyway, I've made three posts and a couple of comments. It required a lot of clicking and playing and futzing around, like having a new pet where you're trying to figure out how to make it sit or poop in the right place. I've had well worded and fully typed comments to friends disappear into the ether without so much as an apology from the system or a stern message of what I did wrong. I usually disagree with a system telling me that I'm wrong, but I'd at least like to have that conversation. Posting a comment on ello is like sending a postcard, and having your mail carrier either read it out loud on cable access TV or just taking it home and using it to line their bird cage without telling you why they did either of those things.

I've given the interface a stroke when I tried to make a post that included both pictures AND text, and had to try reposting three different ways that involved clearing browser caches and seeing how comically broken it is on Safari before I managed somehow to succeed in making ello comply with my desires. I agree, the site is, in many ways, super busted. And everyone here who complains about it is totally justified in complaining about it, and bugging the devs to fix the goddamn thing.

But, you know what? I don't mind. I don't mind because I'm a Livejournal user from back in the day and I grew up in a Third World nation, and both of those gave me some preparation for adversity, disappointment, and accepting that hip, white people will never visualize me when they think of their desired audience. I am used to having to write out my posts in a text editor because I have trust issues with browser forms. I know the value of filters and casually date but never fully move in with social platforms that don't let me know who else they're seeing and let me define my own boundaries around what we share with each other.

And these are my choices, and by expressing my choices, I'm not saying that you should have them or stop agitating or protesting, but I'm just letting you know that I'm not just going into it blithely. I know search is broken, but https://ello.co/(username) works fine and is a cromulent workaround.

Despite the bustedness I like and support ello because it does remind me of LJ back in its 1999 heyday when it was just a bunch of teens, writers, and All Around Cool People who just liked sharing stuff about themselves. I like that the soft expectation of being an Ello user is that you use it as a platform to post about who you are or what you do or what your life is like, and that sharing something like a HuffPo article takes work, because you can't just type a URL and expect the site to give your followers an auto-preview and headline about 12 Faces That John Boehner Makes When He's Bored.

I like that, as an invite-only beta, that Ello does not yet have my cousins and co-workers and old high school friends on the platform, and encouraging them to post in a format that's more interesting than just cute cat pictures. Because I like cute cat pictures, but I don't necessarily want The Paris Review to start a top 10 list of cats that Ernest Hemingway owned.

I currently use my ello account to post previews, photos and links to my Livejournal entries, for an audience that's currently too hip to think of going back to LJ. I won't stop posting to LJ until Ello has threaded comments (hell, functional commenting period would be nice) as well as privacy and security filters that I trust and can control, but it is really the first thing in a long time that's got the potential to be a contender.

(@spokenword)
posted by bl1nk at 6:52 AM on September 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

it does remind me of LJ back in its 1999 heyday when it was just a bunch of teens, writers, and All Around Cool People who just liked sharing stuff about themselves

Yeah. I also got this vibe almost immediately.

Strictly speaking, there's nothing about ello that won't cause it do decay into another LiveJournal or Tumblr (apart from the stark lack of emphasis on reposting). However, I guess we can enjoy it for a few years, and then all come back to MetaFilter, which is apparently immune to the community "rot" that has destroyed every other corner of the internet.
posted by schmod at 7:05 AM on September 26, 2014

In a fit of originality, I'm now @schmod on ello.
posted by schmod at 7:05 AM on September 26, 2014

I've used #1 in scruss's list of codes above, for anyone wanting to try them still. Thank you, scruss!

Go to this page to enter them, and it'll tell you as you enter it if it's been used. (Used = red dot, available = green dot. Handy!)

I'm @pseudonymph, though I have no idea whether i'll use this for more than poking around to have a look at first.
posted by pseudonymph at 7:08 AM on September 26, 2014

Well, I'm 'octothorp' on there (leave the last 'e' off for savings) but I'm not really impressed. It took me five minutes to figure out how to post and the user search doesn't seem to do anything useful.
posted by octothorpe at 7:15 AM on September 26, 2014

Here are some more invite codes. Go here and put them in; if they've already been used the dot will turn red.

gloves-girl-hurrya
wake-thats-front
severely-pigeon-course
evidence-weve-work-way
know-lessonbook-either

This will automatically make you enfriendinate me, which you may or may not want; if anyone does and hasn't yet I am sagrei.
posted by cmyk at 7:30 AM on September 26, 2014

Diaspora has already arrived at its final destination: the answer to a "Trivial Pursuit" question. Diaspora changed nothing.

A month or two ago, I saw mentioned somewhere that the only demographic which has adopted Diaspora are jihadist groups in the Middle East, who need decentralised social-media tools for recruitment videos and such. Has anybody seen any confirmation of this?
posted by acb at 7:38 AM on September 26, 2014

cmyk, I have used know-lessonbook-either.

I am @gas
posted by subversiveasset at 7:40 AM on September 26, 2014

Is it just me, or is there no way to log out?

Edit: you log out on the 'settings' page. WTF
posted by tofu_crouton at 7:49 AM on September 26, 2014

no, the WTF page is a different thing entirely
posted by cmyk at 7:51 AM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

Adding people in here via the search page seemed slow as all get out, so I just went and found a few Mefites and added the Metafilter names I recognised on their Following pages. Much quicker!
posted by pseudonymph at 8:03 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

@emmling, thanks to lemurrhea.

Been adding people as they post their names here, because why not?
posted by emmling at 8:05 AM on September 26, 2014

But, you know what? I don't mind. I don't mind because I'm a Livejournal user from back in the day and I grew up in a Third World nation, and both of those gave me some preparation for adversity, disappointment, and accepting that hip, white people will never visualize me when they think of their desired audience.

Er, I'm also a Livejournal user from back in the day, and I was born and raised in a Third World country, and I apparently have the most visible Ello protest so far. And I do mind. I'm not sure what you're trying to imply by this?
posted by divabat at 8:12 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't think that comment was necessarily posted as a dig towards you? I'm not sure why you're taking it that way?
posted by poffin boffin at 8:20 AM on September 26, 2014

I'm implying that the technical hiccups for a new platform are not strange or insurmountable, and are worth complaining about, but my choice to continue to use the platform despite that does not mean that I'm blithely ignoring them or am entranced or am not performing any critical analysis.
posted by bl1nk at 8:20 AM on September 26, 2014

Thank you, Mikepop. Hope all is well in 207land. I'm in the Rocky Mountains for a bit. Theora55 on Ello.
posted by theora55 at 8:21 AM on September 26, 2014

acb, I have a few friends on Diaspora: The protocol doesn't appear to be stable enough to really fulfill much of the distributed hype. If, indeed, jihadists are using any sort of distributed network, I'd rather suspect it'd be something morelike RetroShare or actually distributed end-to-end encrypted communications tool.
posted by straw at 8:26 AM on September 26, 2014

aaaaaaaaand I'm finally out of invites. Thanks, MeFites, for exhausting my list. I'm sure I could get more but by now there's some exponential increase in availability. I was, am, and will remain your faithful social media contact, @komara.
posted by komara at 8:33 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Thank you, scruss. I'd forgotten I'd sent LynNever a 4am message. And thanks LynNever!

I'm @vaguelyartistic there, as you will all soon find out.
posted by Room 641-A at 8:34 AM on September 26, 2014

I've got a few invites - memail if you want a code.
posted by metaquarry at 8:35 AM on September 26, 2014

Oh, I didn't interpret it as a dig on me personally, more the sense of "it's only privileged people that are complaining".

And good for you for not being entranced. I just wish I could say the same for a lot of my peers.
posted by divabat at 8:41 AM on September 26, 2014

Huzzah! Thanks to metaquarry, I'm now on as @mrbadexample.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:43 AM on September 26, 2014

Invite codes, free for the taking (yes they're all mine):

slipped-lest-minute
cheshirecat-cards-ugh
size-chimneynay
pattering-for
mostly-mouse
makes-quarrelling
spoke-watch-pepper
baby-croqueting
usedand-distance-pat
hated-pink-telescope
still-enough-trying
round-eaglet-sleep
nor-height-queen
never-pleasure-climb
shrieks-footman
possibly-away
had-means-pictures
today-sighing-nearly
eager-somebody
yards-raven-cherrytart
locked-behind-possibly
pigeon-eagerly-lost
here-delight-moment
foot-shyly-crouched
then-edgar-else
queen-told-where
creatures-because
night-curious-hare
you-edge-kneel-real
bed-whatever-wood-here
children-case-fall
any-fireirons-chimney
posted by divabat at 8:57 AM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

to be fair, divabat, I do think you raise some good points in your essay, but I'm also curious as to why you didn't take the opportunity to also pimp Livejournal as a good model of privacy and security? I'm not asking that as cheap shot. It's actually a legitimate question that's circling within my own social group as we're sorting out what our own desires are for a platform like ello vis-a-vis LJ.

"Oh, we want a social media outlet that doesn't show us ads, encourages personal content, doesn't ask for our real names, has robust privacy controls, has useful comment threading, and doesn't profile our usage to fuel predictive algorithms that control what we see? Why don't we just pay $20 for an LJ account?"

because it's not 1999 anymore tends to come up as a reason, and that LJ's a ghost town, and I like to believe that there are better ones than that. Otherwise, the reason is that none of those things are actually as important as being in the nightclub where all of the cool people are and we can just be cool by proximity.
posted by bl1nk at 9:01 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

to be fair, divabat, I do think you raise some good points in your essay, but I'm also curious as to why you didn't take the opportunity to also pimp Livejournal as a good model of privacy and security? I'm not asking that as cheap shot. It's actually a legitimate question that's circling within my own social group as we're sorting out what our own desires are for a platform like ello vis-a-vis LJ.

Because
a) I haven't used Livejournal in a very long time and so don't know what it's like currently esp in terms of privacy settings

b) which also means I had forgotten that Livejournal was a thing when I wrote it (I thought the Russians had taken over and changed a whole bunch of stuff?)

c) This was originally directed to my friends who were looking for a Facebook replacement specifically
posted by divabat at 9:07 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

d) My intention was not to try and pimp any other avenue as safer - I was primarily concerned with ello's lack of privacy, not who else does a better job
posted by divabat at 9:08 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I think I want Facebook to BE a filter. I don't necessarily want friends looking for a replacement. Or perhaps the ones who want to stay on there and aren't looking for a replacement are the ones I want to stay on there?

I was a bit saddened to see some comments on Ello comparing it to only Twitter and FB as if that's the only options -- so many young people have been tainted by a decade of those horrendous visions of "social networking".
posted by symbioid at 9:22 AM on September 26, 2014

I don't know if I'm understanding Ello correctly or not (or even if I'm understanding the problem with ads correctly or not), and I have a lot of *other* thoughts about how well (not) this beta is working, but my thoughts are as follows on purpose are as follows:

1) It seems to me that ads aren't the problem. I mean, I will adblock and I don't like seeing ads, but they aren't the problem.

2) It seems to me that the problem is Facebook's policies regarding identities, names, etc., Ads are a problem only to the extent that they need 'real names' to properly make money from advertising, and so their crappy names policy is the result of trying to make an ad model work.

(I think there are other problems with FB and others, but that's the main one I would point out. I think a lot of social networks also have problems with implementing blocking/anti-trolling/anti-griefing measures.)

My biggest thought on Ello's workings is:

1) Ello needs notifications, bad. Or maybe an option to aggregate/combined emails so I don't get an email every time anything happens (where said email is the only way to reliably keep up with what happens)
posted by subversiveasset at 9:30 AM on September 26, 2014

From what I can see of Ello's marketing and outreach, they're trying to capitalise on people's angst over FB's real name policy (which poses a privacy problem for them on a interpersonal scale, such as protection from harassment or abusers) to promote their product which provides a different sort of privacy (advertising) without actually addressing the actual reason why these new signups are jumping ship.
posted by divabat at 9:34 AM on September 26, 2014

I'm @gauche over there; most of the reason I tried to score an invite was to camp the username.

Question: are we pronouncing this service like "hello" or like it rhymes with "hey-yo"? Because I really want it to be the latter. Can we make that happen?
posted by gauche at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2014

Ello, goodbye:

What I didn’t know at the time was that they’d taken $435,000 in seed funding from FreshTracks Capital, a Vermont-based Venture Capital firm. This had apparently been announced by FreshTracks Capital in March.

[...]

When you take venture capital, it is not a matter of if you’re going to sell your users, you already have. It’s called an exit plan. And no investor will give you venture capital without one.

posted by monospace at 9:40 AM on September 26, 2014 [5 favorites]

Yeah - the VC is a *serious* problem and I hold no hope for this thing as a long term thing, just a toy to fuck with.
posted by symbioid at 9:44 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ello Founder Says VC Funding Is No Big Secret: ‘That’s Silly’
"There's no pressure for us to do anything we don't want to do," Ello founder Paul Budnitz said.

Ello investor, co-founder: Funding or not, we hate ads and we want to “shift values”
posted by monospace at 9:46 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

When you take venture capital, it is not a matter of if you’re going to sell your users, you already have. It’s called an exit plan. And no investor will give you venture capital without one.

I wonder whether a crowdfunded subscription-model social network (perhaps on the MeFi or Wikipedia model) could be sustainable.
posted by acb at 9:48 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Like gauche, I'm mostly in to hold onto Ghidorah, which means I'm @ghidorah. I'll be there if anyone is looking around.
posted by Ghidorah at 9:54 AM on September 26, 2014

Well - I mean I guess LJ has ads, but there is a subscription model there. Dunno how much that contributes to it though.
posted by symbioid at 9:54 AM on September 26, 2014

I really doubt this is going to be a thing in two months, but if I don't sign up now and add my queer friends one by one as they post Ello names on Facebook it's going to be a real pain to jump in later. So I'm corinth over there.
posted by Corinth at 9:55 AM on September 26, 2014

People are creating fake accounts of famous people. Whoever is doing @markzuckerberg has a sense of humour.
posted by Quiplash at 10:00 AM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

I'm out of invites.

I signed up for Ello out of mild curiosity as a programmer to see how they roll out new features (and to claim my nick).

I did find their response regarding their VC funding a little disingenuous. Even taking the VC's statement about personally hating ads at face value, eventually he's going to want a return on his investment somehow, unless he's suggesting that its purely a pet project from his POV.
posted by metaquarry at 10:02 AM on September 26, 2014

Am I incredibly dumb? How do you use the access codes?
posted by Jon Mitchell at 10:09 AM on September 26, 2014

Enter it here.
posted by Corinth at 10:10 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Unsurprisingly, I'm @westringiaf . Thanks, divabat, for both the thoughtful essay and the invite code list! I used then-edgar-else & will pay it forward as soon as I have invite codes to share.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:12 AM on September 26, 2014

Thanks to divabat. I used children-case-fall invite code - it seemed like an almost relevant code to use since I've just had a baby.

I'm @milkb0at on there too, so feel free to friend / unfriend me.
posted by milkb0at at 10:13 AM on September 26, 2014

Still simultaneously not sure exactly how to use Ello, and absolutely sure they could use a good user interface designer.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2014

"1) It seems to me that ads aren't the problem. I mean, I will adblock and I don't like seeing ads, but they aren't the problem."

Well, that's hard to do on Twitter. Companies (or individuals, I guess) can buy 'sponsored' tweets and they just show up randomly in your stream. They're not in a separate box off to the side, and at first you're inclined to think it's something one of your friends has reblogged.

They're not the end of the world, but AdBlock doesn't automatically find and filter them, so they continue to exist.
posted by komara at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2014

When you take venture capital, it is not a matter of if you’re going to sell your users, you already have. It’s called an exit plan. And no investor will give you venture capital without one.

further, from here ...

When you take venture capital, it is not a matter of if you’re going to sell your users, you already have. It’s called an exit plan. And no investor will give you venture capital without one. In the myopic and upside-down world of venture capital, exits precede the building of the actual thing itself. It would be a comedy if the repercussions of this toxic system were not so tragic.

Let me put it bluntly: if a company has taken venture capital, you have already been sold. It’s not a matter of if, it’s simply a matter of when. (Unless the company goes under before it can exit, that is.)

A venture-capital funded startup is a temporary company that has to convince enough people into using their platform so that they can make good on the exit they promised their investors at the very beginning. It is the opposite of a long-term, sustainable business.

And so it is doubly disappointing and worrying that Ello doesn’t mention that they are venture capital funded anywhere on their About page. Instead, as Andy Baio points out in his post on Ello, “[t]he About section makes it seem like Ello was built independently”.
posted by philip-random at 10:14 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

(This is probably 350 comments too late, but since the search feature on Ello is so crummy at the moment, it would make it a lot easier if usernames were posted as links to profile pages. The URL format is http://ello.co/USERNAME. So instead of just saying I'm @johnnydale, I can say that I'm @johnnydale.)
posted by Ian A.T. at 10:19 AM on September 26, 2014 [4 favorites]

Well - if the VC truly thinks the product is so good people will pay, perhaps the ad model will die, and people WILL pay. Will it be enough? Will people be willing to pay the price that it will be enough? Who knows. That's the one way I could see it working, while maintaining it's professed ideals.
posted by symbioid at 10:19 AM on September 26, 2014

I used divabat's "eager-somebody" and am @cancerman.

How do you find other mefites? The search feature seems very clunky.
posted by CancerMan at 10:20 AM on September 26, 2014

CancerMan: How do you find other mefites? The search feature seems very clunky.

I looked on a few mefite's Following lists, and added the usernames i'd seen in this thread. I found that to be a lot easier than trying to use the search function.
posted by pseudonymph at 10:26 AM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

It's also easier to just alter the url than it is to use search. So like http://ello.co/cancerman
posted by tofu_crouton at 10:27 AM on September 26, 2014

Well, that's hard to do on Twitter. Companies (or individuals, I guess) can buy 'sponsored' tweets and they just show up randomly in your stream. They're not in a separate box off to the side, and at first you're inclined to think it's something one of your friends has reblogged.

They're not the end of the world, but AdBlock doesn't automatically find and filter them, so they continue to exist.

Yeah, I would say that sponsored tweets don't bother me that much. I mean, not enough to see a huge upside to an ad-free social network.

So, ultimately I'd agree with divabat's comment:

...they're trying to capitalise on people's angst over FB's real name policy (which poses a privacy problem for them on a interpersonal scale, such as protection from harassment or abusers) to promote their product which provides a different sort of privacy (advertising) without actually addressing the actual reason why these new signups are jumping ship.
posted by subversiveasset at 10:32 AM on September 26, 2014

I've joined too as kattullus. I have no idea what to do with it. I think I'll just post links to stuff I like until I figure out something better.
posted by Kattullus at 10:32 AM on September 26, 2014

It's official; I've become a hopeless Ello followholic. I used the follow-the-people-who-follow-the-people-you-follow technique and I'm up to 2,267 Friends in less than 24 hours! I may need a twelve-step group. I can stop ANY. TIME. I. WANT.

By the way, a decade ago, people who did this on Friendster were called Friendsterwhores, and they used to compete with each other to see who could boast the largest circle. Used to drive Friendster Inc. crazy for "abusing" their system. I could see that happening here really easily unless they install some safeguards (e.g. a maximum of 5,000 people followed)

(find me on Ello @ryanschultz)
posted by Quiplash at 11:00 AM on September 26, 2014

In their Terms, Ello says they have the ability to delete your account if it seems like you're mass-friending people like a robot (among other things, like not posting a profile pic and header in 60 days). I don't know if there's an automated process for that, or if there's a community mod overseeing everything.
posted by CancerMan at 11:05 AM on September 26, 2014

Thx cancerman. Time to take a break and see what develops :-)
posted by Quiplash at 11:10 AM on September 26, 2014

Why can't people who are over Facebook use Twitter like normal people?
posted by larrybob at 11:34 AM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

@dalimind (thanks metaquarry), but I too do not know exactly what you'll see from me.
posted by achrise at 11:46 AM on September 26, 2014

I'm on there as coffeeu . I have invites - memail me an email address if you want one.
posted by nobeagle at 11:47 AM on September 26, 2014

Every new social network attracts politicians. Fact of life. Proof: @dougford. I cannot tell if this site is real or a parody.
posted by Quiplash at 11:48 AM on September 26, 2014

No, I am not following Doug Ford. Even I have some limits ;-)
posted by Quiplash at 11:48 AM on September 26, 2014

It's some social media junior staffer no doubt. Scary. But I somehow doubt Ford Nation is all over ello.
posted by GuyZero at 11:51 AM on September 26, 2014

let's turn this thread into sociable network...
posted by judson at 12:09 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

No, I am not following Doug Ford. Even I have some limits ;-)

Oh well that's embarrassing. I'll just stick to "know your enemy" as my excuse.
posted by Lemurrhea at 12:49 PM on September 26, 2014

OK - sorry all, I just can't in good conscience support it - not without any great assurances on the future. Not without strong support for privacy and locked posts to friends only, not without a filtering mechanism for posts between groups of friends; no real-name is a fine policy but it's not enough, and clearly these people aren't thinking it through. A lot of people hate the UI, but honestly I like it quite a lot. It's simple, out of the way, non-intrusive. It could use work, since it's so early, but that's one thing I kinda like.

But I left G+ cuz of Nym Wars, and I can't in good conscience stay with this thing either.

The only way forward is truly decentralized P2P - and I don't mean diaspora (god bless them), but something more akin to gnunet or appleseed or one of the many other attempts at such a thing. Some day it HAS to happen.

It's the only truly nerd way forward. If that word means anything, anymore. But it seems like either there's just fewer real geeks around or they're harder to find in the clutter of stupid (i.e. reddit/facebook, etc...) ETERNALLY SEPTEMBER!!!
posted by symbioid at 12:51 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm on there as videodrome - memail me for an invite if you need one.
posted by porn in the woods at 1:19 PM on September 26, 2014

Greg Nog: it hasn't gotten a lot of Tumblr notes, but it was linked all over the place on Twitter and Facebook, as well as sites like Engadget, HuffPo Tech, and PCMag. And here! I even got interview with Fast Company and the New Yorker.

I knew it'd really gone viral when at a job interview this morning one of the interviewers started off by telling me he'd seen my post on a friend's FB page.
posted by divabat at 1:20 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Re great assurances for the future: Andy Baio points out that:

LiveJournal's Social Contract promised they'd be ad-free forever. http://web.archive.org/web/20040401175244/http://www.livejournal.com/site/contract.bml ... They started running ads a year after acquisition.

Yeah, I'm there. The Twitter-like spam chicks have already shown up. It's yet another silo. No API or RSS feeds, so it'll be yet another web site to check. Stranger things have happened, but it's not exciting me.
posted by straw at 1:24 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm @sidereal (because I am sidereal) and I just added every single one of you as friends.

We'll see how it pans out. I don't plan on giving any significant personal info despite their manifesto - which is great, don't get me wrong. I'm just all jaded and cynical and I expect them to reach that point too. It'll be interesting to see how their ethics hold up under the weight of modern social media problems. I do wish them the best.

I suppose there could be an entire thread just about the UI/UX of the site, and how it could be improved. There are good ways to get cute with the HTML5 and CSS3, and there are a lot more bad ways...

But hey, It's Beta, and it seems like they are striving mightily to make a good thing, so good for them.
posted by sidereal at 1:28 PM on September 26, 2014

I'm on there as @hap_hazard, thanks to komara, and I've got invites, so if anybody still needs one let me know!
posted by hap_hazard at 1:57 PM on September 26, 2014

I would like an invite please. I promise to also thoroughly friend this thread. Or threaten to.
posted by graventy at 3:44 PM on September 26, 2014

graventy, check your MeFiMail.
posted by Chrysostom at 3:52 PM on September 26, 2014

Late to the party, but there as meghantopus, and have a bunch of invites, should anyone still need them.
posted by MeghanC at 4:15 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Is Diaspora really a dead end? At a glance it looks decent. I was hoping to swoop in and organize a rebound exodus once Ello losses it's luster.
posted by Jonathan Harford at 4:27 PM on September 26, 2014

Is Diaspora really a dead end?

Even really, really smart people I know say they don't want to be a goddamned systems administrator on their own home box just to chat.

If Diaspora wants to be accepted they need to sell it a lot differently, and not make it seem like a pain in the ass to install and maintain.

If this perception is totally, utterly bass-ackwards, and Diaspora is as easy to host as tapping an icon in an App Store, then they really need to pitch it better.
posted by sidereal at 4:36 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

for people thinking about what Ello is going to become:

here's an excellent Medium piece from Quinn Norton (previously of Eulogy for Occupy fame) talking about why something promising what Ello promises is important.

and here's an interesting thread on ello where Quinn hashes out revenue models with a couple members of the ello cabal which has some elements of naivete and early corpspeak but really does remind me, to use straw's analogy, of the sentiment in LJ land when Brad really truly believed in 2000 that he could build a social network that didn't need ads.

I imagine that mathowie probably believed the same thing of MeFi in 1999/2000, and for many years matt and Brad and many of us idealists were right. And if there's one thing that I'm just kind of savoring right now is that part of this platform does hearken back to those terribly naive days.

Which means that this will all go terribly.

I mean seriously -- for all of us who may have spent our time doomsaying on this thread or on other corners of the internet, Ms. Norton's already scooped us with this:

Ello, there’s a lot coming your way, if you do well. The big social networks will compete with you, try to crush you. Users will badger and blame you. Press will misquote, villainize, and oversell you. Governments will threaten and pressure you. Mysterious forces will DDoS you and hunt your users’ data. Well-meaning(ish) assholes will announce your security flaws in public. Enraged people will publicly claim you’re a CIA, NSA, or an FBI front company. Moles will try to work for you. Downtime will threaten you. Actual mentally ill people will threaten you. Toxic communities will blame you for their problems. Media will blame you for your toxic communities. The code won’t scale. The revenue model won’t be quite right. The hosting will be problematic. People will blame you for bigotry, hate, and even aiding human rights abusers and criminals.

…and that’s just what happens if people love you.

posted by bl1nk at 4:58 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Aral Balkan thinks Ello's undisclosed venture capital commitments already spell its doom regarding user trust. Not sure I agree with the extended conclusions (VC = doomed from the start) but all good points (VC = commitments that can't be ignored).

via @boner
posted by sidereal at 5:10 PM on September 26, 2014

a couple of additional thoughts on that thread

also from quinn -- there's a difference between taking in and having to provide a return on investment for $435k in seed funding vs. $2.5 million, and the amount of money backing Ello is pretty small potatoes indeed.

Gigaom article with the VC who basically says that they don't like ads either.

I leave it to my fellow MeFites to decide what stories/theories/scuttlebutt to believe.
posted by bl1nk at 5:19 PM on September 26, 2014

if they are being funded with venture capital nobody should be getting really attached, like other people are pointing out.

At the rate of uptake I'm seeing, I will be able to replace Facebook with Ello in about a week. If Ello turns evil, I'm willing to spend another week, sometime in the future, switching to whatever the next thing is.
posted by Mars Saxman at 5:23 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'd be interested in an invite, if there are any to spare.

Thanks!

In social, I tend to go with my real name, as I also believe in filtering what I post as if my mother and future political opponents could find it.
posted by Apollo's Favorite Mistake at 5:27 PM on September 26, 2014

Well, shit. I am now being followed by a fucking corporate brand. Which is giving me a a "party's over" feel.

:(
posted by aubilenon at 5:42 PM on September 26, 2014

The privacy functions might cost you:

Berger told the Guardian that the plan was to roll out a system where users pay to add features – including, he said, privacy features – at some point in the future. “Privacy comes at a cost,” he said, “and some of our enhanced privacy features will come with fees.”

posted by divabat at 5:42 PM on September 26, 2014

Aral Balkan thinks Ello's undisclosed venture capital commitments already spell its doom regarding user trust. Not sure I agree with the extended conclusions (VC = doomed from the start) but all good points (VC = commitments that can't be ignored).

Meanwhile Aral Balkan, is busy rebranding the security conscious open source underground under the nom de plume "INDIE TECH" dun-dun-dunn-duuuuunnnn
posted by xcasex at 5:52 PM on September 26, 2014

Even really, really smart people I know say they don't want to be a goddamned systems administrator on their own home box just to chat.

I just joined Diaspora out of curiosity and I'm not understanding why anyone would think it's complicated. So far it seems easier to understand than Facebook.
posted by Librarypt at 6:00 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have 2x invites leftover if anyone still is interested in joining ello. Just send a PM. Thanks.
posted by chrono_rabbit at 6:06 PM on September 26, 2014

Berger told the Guardian that the plan was to roll out a system where users pay to add features – including, he said, privacy features – at some point in the future. “Privacy comes at a cost,” he said, “and some of our enhanced privacy features will come with fees.”

O my god are you fucking kidding me.

the place better empty out like it's on fire if this is really their plan. this is evil. Think whatever the fuck you like, but it's very very gross and slimy to me to create a service going "we don't require real names! we respect privacy! you aren't a product!" and then go "if you want privacy features pony up".

It's a smart way to monetize, i understand why a VC would go with that, but it's "smart" in the same way that the UPS "student worker" labor practices discussed in another recent thread are smart at like, making UPS money. It's utterly fucking dystopian in the context of real life, and not in a vacuum.

It literally was not a joke when people were talking about how in the future, only the rich will be able to afford privacy. Everyone else is just monetization waiting to happen. Either they get your data, or your money. Want to avoid harassment? That'll cost ya'.


They're basically betting on getting a critical mass of users on their "new cool" site, and especially the right kind of users, that when they soft launch pay-extra privacy features(alongside other cute cool features, of course) they'll get enough uptake and enough of people not bailing to keep going forward.

I really really really want to see them spectacularly fail and crash and burn now. Because if they don't, this will become the new normal. Facebook says "it's free, and it always will be" on the front page, but that will quickly mean that just facebook is free. If you want facebook plus, well pony up lol.
posted by emptythought at 6:23 PM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

I don't know anything about Diaspora, but I'm not sure why you'd have to "be a goddamned systems administrator" if social media were a protocol like SMTP or NNTP. I mean, I can (and have) built and run a sendmail server. I don't ever want to do that again. Somehow I still have email, as do people who don't know anything except hotmail.com.
posted by ctmf at 6:30 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

More signup codes! Here's where you go and wait for a green dot: ello.co/join

jurybox-ready-outside
back-cried-shut-from
untwist-she-going
stuff-animals-kings
all-hatter-heads-pink
little-what-mouth-last
roses-who-prison
eye-cards-shes-feel

If this becomes a Thing, then cool, I snagged my name; if not, then we're all having fun playing with it. Especially desjardins' cat gifs.
posted by cmyk at 6:31 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

All invites gone for now. Even if goes nowhere at least I got a cool name this time around.
posted by chrono_rabbit at 6:47 PM on September 26, 2014

I just joined Diaspora out of curiosity and I'm not understanding why anyone would think it's complicated. So far it seems easier to understand than Facebook.

Yah! I believe you 100%. It's not the application, it's the marketing. To clarify what I wrote, really smart people are wrong about Diaspora, because it hasn't been pitched right. That's sad for more than one reason.

Protip for Diaspora business development peeps: never say "port", or even mention "protocols". Try and talk around it.
posted by sidereal at 6:53 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here are a few codes I for invite seekers:

certainly-patted
this-raising-loudly
hastily-eyes
posted by Room 641-A at 7:15 PM on September 26, 2014

the place better empty out like it's on fire if this is really their plan. this is evil. Think whatever the fuck you like, but it's very very gross and slimy to me to create a service going "we don't require real names! we respect privacy! you aren't a product!" and then go "if you want privacy features pony up".

So remind me again how terrible ads are, the way they let you give every user the same features?
posted by GuyZero at 7:18 PM on September 26, 2014

I have some invite codes. Memail me if you want one!
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 7:19 PM on September 26, 2014

Here's the ones I got:

it-room-execution

seems-balls-name-kings

ann-loudly-not-ill

remarking-them

well-somehow-corner

enjoy.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:19 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

palimpsest-haiku
summer-folding-carefully
into-falls-embrace
posted by sidereal at 7:26 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

So remind me again how terrible ads are, the way they let you give every user the same features?

I was never on the side of ads being an inherently bad thing. I realize that ads aren't "hip", and that's not the cool position to take or whatever, but i can actually respect the fact that with facebook it's obvious how the sausage is made. You put up information, that information is digested and ads are served, people pay to display those ads and some people click them, the money from the people running the ads pays to keep the hard drives turning in the servers.

This is pretty logical to me. It's like a delivery truck being paid to move packages, and the packages paying the driver and the fuel so the truck keeps moving around town. The only problem with it is that it isn't "hip" and "disrupting the paradigm".

So, this alternative model comes along! And it's basically just as shitty as free to play MMOs, but for social networking.

I hope people realize soon that this model is fucking them in the ass harder than the ad model. Because it wont be microtransactions for long, or it'll be so many that it's no longer cheap, or something. Because this isn't some $2 game where you shoot birds at pigs, no, this is more like one of those games where if you want to win you just keep paying for upgraded items and shit and it's easy to spend $100. That's the revenue model they're dreaming of. Even if ello isn't the one to implement it, that's where this road leads.

There's no slippery slope here, it's a flat highway with clearly marked exits.

Either you are the product(or at least, your info is) or you're going to pay something close to what they were paying for that info. No one is going to give you the hotdog someone else was paying their competitor $5 to give you for free to you for $2.50, at least not for long.

I feel weird and gross saying this, but ads and data mining were really a bit of an egalitarian equalizer. Pay to play is quickly going to become "you can have as much privacy as you can afford". And who the fuck really believes that ads won't come in on top of paying eventually? Tumblr made a bunch of noise about being ad free and shit, and look where we are now.
posted by emptythought at 7:36 PM on September 26, 2014 [3 favorites]

I was never on the side of ads being an inherently bad thing.

I was being rhetorical, but thanks for putting it better than I could have.

To quote John Gruber quoting Andy Warhol: "What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."

Gruber was applying Warhol's words to the iPhone - there's only one iPhone and it's the best. Now, facebook may not be the best, but there's only one facebook whether you're Lady Gaga or some poor kid who logs in in her local public library.
posted by GuyZero at 7:42 PM on September 26, 2014

I was a very early joiner & have a lot of invites if anybody still needs one. Memail me yr email address and I'll shoot you one.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 8:42 PM on September 26, 2014

Ello needs notifications, bad. Or maybe an option to aggregate/combined emails so I don't get an email every time anything happens (where said email is the only way to reliably keep up with what happens)

Actually, this is one of my complaints so far: The notification emails are completely devoid of context or information. Twitter and Facebook have been doing this to drive more clicks to their site -- for Ello to adopt this practice is hypothetically contrary to their (hypothetical; probably fake) ethos.
posted by schmod at 8:55 PM on September 26, 2014

A few more codes:

handed-since-reaching
duchesss-race-serpents
glass-edge-life-sticks
posted by tavella at 8:58 PM on September 26, 2014

emptythought: what you describe sounds like calling Ello the Candy Crush Saga of social networks.

Everyone's entranced, people make excuses for it, it may end up nickel-and-diming you without you realising...

...hey, kinda fits.
posted by divabat at 9:52 PM on September 26, 2014 [1 favorite]

Save the doom-mongering already, and stop acting like any display of skepticism makes you so much smarter than anyone who's all "this looks neat, lemme try it out." Seriously. If it ends up sucking, please give people some modicum of credit - we abandoned friendster and myspace and a long list of other dead(ish) social media sites. There are a number of people in my ello feeds commenting exactly the sort of skeptical commentary you seem to think they can't possibly have. We're not fucking zombies, and it's irritating to see you act like we must be.
posted by rtha at 10:07 PM on September 26, 2014 [7 favorites]

someone give me an invite
posted by codacorolla at 10:56 PM on September 26, 2014

me too

mefi pls
posted by Rhaomi at 11:00 PM on September 26, 2014

rtha: I don't know if that's directed at me or not. If it is, I can tell you that I am not saying what I'm saying, or persistent in doing so, because I'm trying to act like I'm smarter than everyone else.

I wrote my post the first time because I was terrified. Specifically, that I would be found by people who have abused me in the past using my social media content as ammunition (such as spinning rumours out of comments I write on mutual friends' posts), people who I knew were in the same circles as the Big Gay Exodus, people who I knew were often early adopters of social media and who would jump headfirst into Ello. Facebook and Twitter had ways for me to protect myself, such as blocking them from seeing my accounts (and protecting me from being suddenly triggered when I see their names), or carefully selecting who I want to read what. It wasn't perfect, but it was workable.

I don't even feel safe describing specific people/relationships/situations to demonstrate my point, because that would be way too easily identifiable, and will just bring about the very thing I was trying to avoid.

In the meantime, as I said before, so many of my online friends were obsessed with Ello. There were threads planning a QPOC takeover. Some of their other friends did complain about privacy, but they got shouted down as cynics or doomsayers or whatever. I did get an account, but didn't really do much with it, until Lynn (the CollectQT person) brought up consent in social media, and I went to see if I could block the abusers from accessing my profile in any way.

The lack of options startled me. I really didn't want my abusers to find me, especially if the idea was to ditch Facebook for Ello (since I get pretty personal on FB). I asked my friends if I was just missing the option, they confirmed that it wasn't there, I got alarmed, I wrote my goodbye post.

When I tried to talk to my friends about it, some were pretty supportive and shared my post immediately. Some joined me on the anti-Ello train and helped articulate more problems with Ello's approach to privacy. But so many of them didn't seem to give a shit. Some friends would follow my comments on other friends' posts about Ello and give me the exact same "It's beta, so it means not all the features are there yet, patience padawan" splaining (apparently forgetting that I'd already heard that a thousand times, half of it from that same person). Some completely ignored me and kept talking about invite-swapping, linking to the "manifesto" as some sort of proof that they were Definitely Pro Privacy.

These are the same people who hyper-analysed and hyper-critiqued Emma Watson's UN speech because it was too indicative of white feminism, the same people who argued against Facebook because it was run by straight white men, who would normally not resist researching any new thing to see if it was intersectional or not. The same people who would complain about capitalist companies using terms like "manifesto" and "anarchist" to describe their business. And they're being scarily and unusually sucked in, without criticism.

I wish they had this level of fervour for projects run by their fellow Q/T/PoC - all those crowdfunding campaigns that end up low in cash!

I wrote my post just before I went to sleep, and when I woke up the next day it was already being linked far and wide. I've been spending the last couple of days (including today, my birthday) keeping track and answering queries and keeping my post updated with latest developments. I'm starting to see my words being quoted but not attributed. (to be fair, in the original post I did say I didn't care about attribution.) People I would have never interacted with in my life were Tweeting my posts.

It's pretty overwhelming.

Yes, I have been pretty aggressive with promoting my post - mostly to my friends who were (and still are) in the thrall of Ello and are acting really out of character just to defend it. I know you said your friends weren't as brainwashy and I'm glad to hear that! I wish I could say the same for most of my friends!

To manage, I've ended up being a snarkster. Having similar (and more intense) snarksters like Lynn and other friends around helps, because it's comic relief. The situation has become so absurd that all I can do sometimes is laugh with befuddlement, crack silly jokes about it, and maybe sound like the smart-ass you're maybe claiming us to be. Because sometimes I've run out of earnestness or social-justice-ness.

This has literally been the weirdest 48+ hours that I can remember and it doesn't seem to end anytime soon.
posted by divabat at 11:36 PM on September 26, 2014 [2 favorites]

Thanks to tavella for the invite -- I am @rhaomi over there. MeFiMailMe if you want in. I will post the secret code word "HOPPITAMOPPITA49" when the invite cache is exhausted. Special agent 62135 out.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:01 AM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

The more I read and experience, the more this is reading less as New Facebook (whatever their intention) and more as New Tumblr.

(That's a neutral statement for me, as I didn't have any particular expectations and wishes for it to begin with.)
posted by pseudonymph at 4:33 AM on September 27, 2014

Invite codes:

roast-pictures-must
not-faces-puzzled
soup-prizes-water-give
rising-ears-theirs
understand-toto-room
alarm-tarts-never
know-added-rosetree
nest-begin-done-where
upstairs-left-i-rise
telescope-wood-rise
posted by Librarypt at 7:35 AM on September 27, 2014

rtha: I don't know if that's directed at me or not. If it is, I can tell you that I am not saying what I'm saying, or persistent in doing so, because I'm trying to act like I'm smarter than everyone else.

Yes, mostly because of Everyone's entranced, people make excuses for it, it may end up nickel-and-diming you without you realising...

Like you think we're all thoughtless zombies who will end up emptying our wallets to the ello devs without realizing it because we're so dumb. I'm sorry if a lot of your friends are shutting down criticism about it; that is not happening with the people I joined with/am following, and it's tiresome to be lumped in with people who are, especially if that lumping is based solely on people being like "hey, beta, let's wait and see." That is not enthralled, and that is not defensive; that is what it says on the tin.

I will quote something that @caitlindonohue said over there:

The issue is not whether Ello is better than Facebook. Technologically speaking, no shit Sherlock, Ello has issues. And yeah, the promises laid out in the mission statements seem a little far-fetched and maybe they'll change in the future and obviously we should keep an eye on that -- it is a company after all, and companies have to benefit from us somewhere. But as we whinge about faulty search bars and the like, I think it's important to remember that the point is not to find a perfect social media network that fulfills your every need. Only we can do that for each other. Relying on a single corporation to be able to communicate with friends, plan an event, or just live through a day handicaps all the social change we're spending our lives creating. I'd be stoked if the #queerexodus led not to a SHIFT in our corporate allegiances, but to a realization that having them cripples all the other positive moves we make in the world. Change your brand often, if only to let 'em know you're the one in charge. Peace, kittens
posted by rtha at 7:39 AM on September 27, 2014 [4 favorites]

hey-they-should-just
monetize-by-slipping
ads-into-invite-codes
burma-shave
posted by oulipian at 8:59 AM on September 27, 2014 [18 favorites]

Is it possible to form a Metafilter group over there?
posted by craniac at 9:33 AM on September 27, 2014

I don't think there's any sort of formal grouping mechanism at this point, though I like to think we've formed a sort of Rat King in terms of the current social graph.
posted by cortex at 9:37 AM on September 27, 2014 [9 favorites]

Yes, mostly because of Everyone's entranced, people make excuses for it, it may end up nickel-and-diming you without you realising...

Like you think we're all thoughtless zombies who will end up emptying our wallets to the ello devs without realizing it because we're so dumb.

Again, that's more being snarky and somewhat exasperated, riffing off emptythought's piece. It's coming after having been keeping track of Ello news and just being so confused over the reaction. There's no need to take it personally.
posted by divabat at 10:12 AM on September 27, 2014

Also the concern about emptying wallets without realising isn't an attack on people's intelligence, but more reflecting on how apps like Candy Crush Saga are built in such a way that you don't realise how much you've spent until later. I have spent stupid amounts of money on games and other things with microtransactions that weren't really worth it, but did so because I got sucked in enough that I thought I needed Feature X or Y to continue.
posted by divabat at 10:21 AM on September 27, 2014

Mod note: A few comments removed, cool it.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:17 AM on September 27, 2014

People, like adult people, actually spent money on Candy Crush Saga? Heh, awesome.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 4:22 PM on September 27, 2014

I'm @jackie1776 and I have no idea what I'm doing.
posted by Jacqueline at 8:45 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ello Goodbye?

Of course these "updates on Ello and its privacy issues" are on Tumblr. ;)

Many unresolved issues, some things the developers are trying to address, but Ello is in such an 'Early Beta' state and went viral so quickly, they are obviously playing Wack-A-Mole with users' concerns.

Meanwhile, Ello creator Paul Budnitz is quoted in a Fortune interview: “If you don’t like what we’re doing, then please delete your account and leave,” which is always good advice. (Personally, I've already done it to Facebook; you won't find me there, folks)

And here's one crazy story on that blog. It seems the author was notified that she was being followed by the Ello account for Clickhole, aka the parody of Buzzfeed being done by The Onion. But when she dug deeper, she found that the Clickhole Ello account was set up NOT by anybody at Clickhole/The Onion, but apparently somebody associated with Buzzfeed. Welcome to The Internet, Ello.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:29 PM on September 27, 2014 [1 favorite]

Well, there's finally an unofficial 'like' function - the bread emoji (created by typing :bread: wherever appropriate).
posted by komara at 11:06 PM on September 27, 2014

wow.
the blowback is astounding.

to be clear, this was started back in march (i think) relatable experience says that a product like this takes more than half a year to build.

we built a recruitment portal in five months and it wasn't feature complete but had to be out the door, so naturally there were bugs as well, and we rolled with the feedback from customers as it related to features as well and that shit takes time.

it's not a simple turning of screws when it comes to feature implementation and i dont think they deserve the kind of attention they're getting.

there's been criticism all over the place, some justified some not. but to expect them to implement granular privacy controls because the site went viral is disingenious.

and i'm not amused at the torchbearers for some of the criticism.

if you don't like it, don't use it. they have a social contract, if they adhere to it - good, if not, goodbye.
but passing that judgement at this point in time, at this level of completion is utterly and irrevocably premature.
posted by xcasex at 11:43 PM on September 27, 2014

oneswellfwoop: I am the author! Trying to update that one post constantly was getting difficult (yay, tumblr :P) so I made it easier on myself by moving all the updates to their own space. Also it helps in not clogging my own blog so much.

xcasex: I really don't understand this idea of "it's in early beta so therefore all criticism is unwarranted". Why? Now is the ideal time to nitpick and critique and suggest. And some suggestions will come on strong because it means a lot more to some people (like my story about why the privacy controls are so important to me given their marketing). If we waited till the site was complete (what's the stage after Beta called?) then the criticism would be "you should have said this when it was in Beta, they would have taken your suggestions and changed things". Can't win.

For the record: since one of the consistent criticisms I got was that I never contacted Ello directly, I did so to ask about how the fact that Netflix can and just did follow me on Ello square with their core promise of privacy from advertisers. I got an automated reply about how they're swamped, they're "only human", and if they don't reply it means they are thinking about the issue so I shouldn't worry. This does not inspire confidence.
posted by divabat at 11:51 PM on September 27, 2014

Oh and re that Clickhole story: I still have no idea if it really was someone from Buzzfeed, or if it's a troll whose MO is to pretend to be from different websites.

I'm a little frustrated with the "if you don't like it, delete" assertion - reminds me too much of "if you don't like it, leave", which only just creates echo chambers of sycophants and alienates people who aren't 100% in line.
posted by divabat at 11:54 PM on September 27, 2014

I really don't understand this idea of "it's in early beta so therefore all criticism is unwarranted". Why? Now is the ideal time to nitpick and critique and suggest. And some suggestions will come on strong because it means a lot more to some people (like my story about why the privacy controls are so important to me given their marketing).

they have a goal, they're shooting for it.
granular privacy controls takes time to implement it's also not just those features being implemented it's all basically on a timetable with pre-existing priority.
granted, privacy controls are likely to be at the very top.. now.

but their mistake here isn't implementing it fast enough, it's going live as a "beta" -- which these days really is all about marketing to early adopters -- thinking that it was "complete" enough.
the expectations, as you've shown, are clearly higher these days.

i'm personally ready to let this slide, because of how new the platform is and i'm not without my own special kind of detractors, stalkers & haters.

If we waited till the site was complete (what's the stage after Beta called?) then the criticism would be "you should have said this when it was in Beta, they would have taken your suggestions and changed things". Can't win.

there's no good answer here that's not going to be tweeted as "mansplaining".

but if it were me, i'd create a list of suggestions, elaborate point by point. network to get close and have it put under their noses.

I'm a little frustrated with the "if you don't like it, delete" assertion - reminds me too much of "if you don't like it, leave", which only just creates echo chambers of sycophants and alienates people who aren't 100% in line.

"if you don't like it, block." is also in that same category.

the solution here isn't to exclude by default -- because really removing an account, blocking a user is all about exclusion -- , but to educate. and let the solution provider enforce their directives for stalking, hatespeech etc.

but as i wrote above, there's no easy way to do any of this atm.

so it's damned if they do, damned if they dont right this very second.
posted by xcasex at 12:12 AM on September 28, 2014

If you release something to the general public, you're going to have to deal with criticism. That's just the way it works. That goes double when you've released something that's not finished.
posted by octothorpe at 4:24 AM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

If you release a thing half done you should expect criticism for it being half done.

It's a beta, and they have a link right in the header that lists what features have been implemented and what features they're planning to implement. Seems like they're reasonably upfront about what's done and what's not...
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:52 AM on September 28, 2014 [4 favorites]

and I log onto twitter, and my feed is full of "THEY HAVENT THIS/THAT PRIVACY CONTROL YET!!!!!"
I think its a toxic attitude, it says right there on the upcoming feature list what's next, and that's privacy features, give them a break.
posted by xcasex at 11:25 AM on September 28, 2014

Privacy controls were nowhere on their feature list until after the uproar. There's still no ETA from them. They said on The Guardian - not even directly to users - that "privacy comes at a cost" and they'll charge for "enhanced privacy features" but we don't know what they are.

And i stil maintain that in today's climate, opening up a social network without privacy and safety from the start is tone deaf.
posted by divabat at 2:29 PM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

yes, but no amount of beating the horse will jolt it back to health, it's dead. it can't get dead-er.

and I'll be over here, maintaining that everyone makes mistakes and that's ok, but let them roll with the punches and get something out there before we declare them uncooperative and hostile.
posted by xcasex at 2:48 PM on September 28, 2014

Thank you, ghidorah, for the invite code. I am @celandine100. I would like to be all of metafilter's friend!
posted by mkim at 2:54 PM on September 28, 2014

marcheiden on Ello, with thanks to timmoydaen. Happy to share invites if needed.
posted by chimpsonfilm at 4:22 PM on September 28, 2014

I kinda like it the way it is, all strange and baffling, and I hope they don't change it much.

(chimpsonfilm, it's ello.co not ello.com, if you still have time to edit your post)
posted by sidereal at 6:36 PM on September 28, 2014

Ello Status

Partial System Outage

Frontend? Major Outage
Web Host Operational

Past Incidents

Sep 28, 2014
DDoS attack
Resolved - ips have been blocked

Sep 28, 16:50 EDT
Investigating - We are undergoing a potential denial of service attack.
posted by Room 641-A at 7:20 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

Sep 28, 2014
DDoS attack
Resolved - ips have been blocked

yeah, so they have, what? 4 developers? I'm pretty sure that for the past week, one of those developers has been fully tasked with just keeping the servers from collapsing because of the increased load, and possibly staying on the phone with techs from their co-lo or cloud host, begging, pleading and screaming for more RAM, more disk or more VM instances to deal with the increased page load, while in the meantime trying to teach themselves how to configure an F5 or a Cisco iOS device or (god help them) edit an apache .conf file to ignore traffic from malicious IPs.

Blocking IPs for DDoS attacks means that you're playing whack-a-mole and going for the shortest of short fix remedies because you don't have time to review and implement firewall agents to monitor for bot signatures and implement a secondary web node to act as a decoy for all of your bots. Your curtains are on fire and you're trying to put out the fire with a water gun because you don't have time to run back to your sink to fill a bucket with water, much less call for help.

DDoS attacks are a run-of-the-mill threat to any web site. There are academic publishers whose works cover the dryest aspects of 18th century German philosophical debate who have to fend of DDoS attacks from Ukrainian botnets who are targeting them for no better reason than it's Sunday. The fact that ello's responding to DDoS in this way pretty much telegraphs newbie level devops prowess. Or, worse, they're hosting with a provider who can't support more robust bot-defense tools and thus have a fatal flaw in their launch plan.

That means you have three engineers left. At least one, if not two are trying to figure out why current comment posting is flaky, or why the JSON objects for a post are exposed when you open a new tab when writing a post, and whether or not that's security flaw or not. The last one is probably subbing in for DDoS whack-a-mole dude when the former needs to sleep, and/or is thinking hard about why the site isn't working in Safari because why is a site that's pitched to creatives not actually always being tested in Safari?

Seriously, for everyone who's jumped on this thread speaking about nefarious intentions, I'd remind us all not to chalk up to maliciousness what can be explained by incompetence. These guys were not ready for the amount of viral attention that they got this past week. As far as I could see, the invite codes started going out at the beginning of the month, nearly a week or so before Facebook made their Real Names policy decision and it was just a coincidence that the two factors combined into this viral wanna-be privacy life raft that leaks like a sieve.

They've been coding this thing since March and this is what we've got so far? A site that eats comments and flakes out on complex posting, that doesn't work on Firefox, barely works on Safari and even acts weird and flaky on Chrome? Has no native mobile app and has a responsive layout that works fine for reading but is barely usable for posting in Android and IOS? And we expect them to push out a stable release with privacy filters and reciprocal user friending, like, yesterday?

I'd be surprised if they even figure out how to get Paypal integration working by the end of next week.
posted by bl1nk at 7:52 PM on September 28, 2014 [2 favorites]

Works fine on this instance of Firefox, and works fine on my work Windows FF as well. So...I dunno.

What gives me biggest pause is Budnitz saying in a recent interview (NPR? Marketplace?) about how they were overwhelmed by the attention and signups had shot to ridiculousnumberperday and I was like, well, shut down invites. This is not hard math; do something like what mathowie did and close signups for a while. Get your foundations more stable and figure out how you're going to do stuff and then make that stuff and then open signups again. But then, mathowie was never in the hole to VC firms, either.
posted by rtha at 8:58 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

on the phone with techs from their co-lo or cloud host, begging, pleading and screaming for more RAM, more disk or more VM instances to deal with the increased page load

There's no begging. You just give them your credit card until it maxes out. Then you site shuts down.
posted by GuyZero at 9:40 PM on September 28, 2014 [1 favorite]

One of my friends just deleted their ello because someone hacked it for invites. It still appears to be there to me, which doesn't surprise me given the beta state, but is an interesting thing to know.
posted by immlass at 6:36 AM on September 29, 2014

I am @matildaben.
posted by matildaben at 8:50 AM on September 29, 2014

I'm there as @pallas_athena.
posted by Pallas Athena at 9:21 AM on September 29, 2014

On as @coriejweaver.
posted by korej at 9:56 AM on September 29, 2014

There have been plenty of complaints (or ... uh ... critical commentary I guess) about Ello so far, so I figured I'd throw in some praise, however faint and fleeting.

I just wrote this post which in itself is not important, but the structure of the thing is something I can't accomplish in any of my other social networks.

1.) It's immediately viewable by everyone that's following me. I'm not on Facebook anymore but I hear that's the biggest complaint over there now - that your output may not reach all your followers unless you cough up cash.
2.) It's more than 140 characters, handily beating Twitter.
3.) It's got text with HTML in it, and then a photo, and then more text. It could easily have been two images, or four. I could put text sections in-between whatever. Google+ allows for text then an image, but no text then image then text.
4.) Regarding the above - I believe I could approximate this on Tumblr but that platform does not have built-in commenting available, just the weird "reblog and add your thoughts" culture.

What's absolutely ridiculous is that the gestalt of what I've listed above has been available to me on my own Wordpress blog for ages, and if I can recall the early 2000s it was (is still?) also possible through LiveJournal. We've had to cycle through the Twitter / Facebook / etc. lunacy for years now just to return to a relatively well-populated platform where I can write and use markup and post images in the order I want and generally massage a post into the look and shape that I desire.

For that alone I have a continued interest in Ello, whatever other overall problems continue to persist.
posted by komara at 10:08 AM on September 29, 2014 [13 favorites]

Well, on the off chance that someone still has invites and are willing to share with an avowed bad guy, I'd love to check it out, even in a diminished capacity.

(the site, not me. Though me also.)
posted by quin at 3:57 PM on September 29, 2014

Here you go!

dive-brass-no-me-183ae7

gravely-managed-very-62ab3e

busily-sir-happen-well-0c9c05
posted by mkim at 4:48 PM on September 29, 2014

Awesome. Thanks mkim, I think I'm going to have to wait till they let people start registering again, because as of this post, I don't see any place to create a new profile.
posted by quin at 5:23 PM on September 29, 2014

quin, go here: https://ello.co/join
posted by CancerMan at 5:26 PM on September 29, 2014

Thanks! My wife caught my mistake about 10 seconds after the edit window closed.

But I'm in. And like a toxic chemical spill, I will spread and corrupt this pretty new place with my filth, disease, and vulgarity, just like I've done here.

I'm @iconomicon for anyone who wants a little corruption in their life.
posted by quin at 5:38 PM on September 29, 2014

In my most recent comment I said, "What's absolutely ridiculous is that the gestalt of what I've listed above has been available to me on my own Wordpress blog for ages, and if I can recall the early 2000s it was (is still?) also possible through LiveJournal."

Tonight I went over to LiveJournal for the first time in any sort of recent memory and while browsing through my friends' journal entries I found this comment - by someone other than me - from 2011:

"I really think [LiveJournal is] still a preferable format to any of the other big social media in so many ways: long-form entries, multiple pictures, picture-text-picture alternation ability for those long entries, sensible organization of responses. I wish it were still used more."

So what I'm saying is it looks like I'm only three years behind in my realization that I never knew how good I had it back in the early 2000s when I was on LJ every hour of the day.
posted by komara at 6:58 PM on September 29, 2014 [3 favorites]

Some of us are still here, though not every hour of the day, because it is a bit of a ghost town :(

I do think I've posted to LJ less this year than any other year since 2000. :(

My friend and I constantly talk about LJ as the ideal "social network" precisely because it's ability to just be html + no length on the post (IIRC, though there might be one, it's certainly not 420 words - and yeah - replies are more limited, but still fairly good length), the privacy options, the ability to filter to read and share alone all make it awesome. Adding themes into the mix (though they're going more and more the FB route). LJ til I die is all I know. FB, G+, Twitter, Tumblr... pftt, they can rot. I mean, sure I use FB/Tumblr, but they're just there to post pictures or see what some friends are up to, but I could really give 2 shits about them as platforms.
posted by symbioid at 7:19 PM on September 29, 2014

I like seeing praise for LJ because it really is a viable platform for publishing words and pictures, and for inviting commentary. The moderation is solely user-based. Stalking/abuse can be nipped in the bud. That sort of thing never festers and metastasizes as far as I can tell.

There's plenty to complain about - the UI/UX is pretty clunky, it's owned buy shady Russians, there's little or no customer support. But it works, for a particular kind of social media: blogging, with comments. Works okay.
posted by sidereal at 8:03 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

komara: 3.) It's got text with HTML in it, and then a photo, and then more text. It could easily have been two images, or four. I could put text sections in-between whatever. Google+ allows for text then an image, but no text then image then text.

I like this, but i dislike the fact that if i try and make a post while viewing the newsfeed... the post button breaks. Or i end up with a comically hilarious screen of 3-10 glitched empty post boxes below my post. I can only make a post from my own page.

Yea i know, it's "beta", but tumblr actually worked when it was an early beta like this. People keep telling me "lol it's beta get over it", but this "release the broken alpha and call it beta" culture that is especially prevalent in early releases of games, but spreading everywhere, just totally irks me.

Another funny comment is that every feature you described was available... on myspace. Which was still fairly active and functional before some stupid redesign until the very late 2000s. It outlasted the whole LJ and wordpress. But then facebook came in and became popular with so much of that functionality removed, and every service that came after that basically decided that no one cared or had some bizarre vision of the restrictions shaping the community into more what they thought it should be.

Happy to know i'm not alone in thinking that while smartphones and apps have been moving us forward in a lot of UI/UX stuff and generally improving the actual process of interacting with sites and services, that the sites and services themselves have been getting crappier at letting us do what we actually want.

Mostly, i just really really miss the customization those sites offered. LJ had quite a bit of it, but myspace was virtually unlimited. Even ello is just like "oh, you get a little round photo and a header photo". I miss designing the whole damn page.
posted by emptythought at 8:26 PM on September 29, 2014 [1 favorite]

"Mostly, i just really really miss the customization those sites offered."

Oh my god that is the last thing I miss about those sites. I mean I'm not saying Ello is beautiful or Twitter is gorgeous, but they're both miles above some of the user-"designed" atrocities I saw back in the heyday of LJ.

I know, I know - there's only a small distance between being able to fully customize your message and being able to fully customize the envelope in which it's delivered, but I'll be happy to draw a big fat line between the two and request that we stay on the "no messing with your blog's ultimate design" forever. I mean even today, looking at other Tumblr blogs from my dashboard (where everything is standardized) is fine but clicking through to someone's individual page can be a nightmare where things as simple as finding the 'previous posts' button become impossible.
posted by komara at 9:07 PM on September 29, 2014 [4 favorites]

....some of the user-"designed" atrocities I saw back in the heyday of LJ.

Or those seizure-inducing Myspace pages.
posted by Jacqueline at 10:21 PM on September 29, 2014

I think that I'll come back to ello (if it's still around) in a few months. Right now I don't see much point to it.
posted by octothorpe at 4:44 AM on September 30, 2014 [1 favorite]

I've been thinking of starting up a for-real rambling "here's what i did" "here's some random writing" BLOG again.

What platform should i use?
posted by rebent at 5:38 AM on September 30, 2014

ZeFrank, on The Show, about ugly MySpace pages:

For a very long time, taste and artistic training have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive; same with tools like printing presses; even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family.

The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was good taste or bad taste. These designers started giving each other awards and the rules they followed became even more specific. All sorts of stuff about grids and sizes and color combinations — lots of stuff that the consumers of this media never consciously noticed. Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. For very little money, anyone can create and distribute things like newsletters, or videos, or bad-ass tunes about "ugly." [Earlier in the show he'd performed a song about ugly MySpace pages.]

Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! And when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently. If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to. For example, throughout most of the history of movies, the audience didn't really understand what a craft editing was. Now, as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second-guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.

As people start learning and experimenting with these languages authorship, they don't necessarily follow the rules of good taste. This scares the shit out of designers.

In Myspace, millions of people have opted out of pre-made templates that "work" in exchange for ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool.

Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your Myspace page ugly are pretty sophisticated. Over time as consumer-created media engulfs the other kind, it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability.

posted by Ian A.T. at 6:58 AM on September 30, 2014 [9 favorites]

For the sake of bringing all the mefites together as easily as possible, I've compiled a list of everyone in this thread who volunteered their Ello username. Context is @username - mefiname, or just @username if the Ello and Mefi names match.

For instance, I am @iconomicon - quin

As far as searching, I think I've figured out why it seems so shitty; It doesn't look like it will show your information until you have some basic info. I've had success with an avatar and some words in the Bio.

here's the list (If I have anything wrong, or there has been updates since we discovered the name change ability, maybe add them in a later comment if you want company.)

@lownote
@rebent
@monospace
@lyn_never
@inturnaround
@sagrei - cmyk
@KathrynT
@davegoodman - Happy Dave
@mas - Stynxno
@ryanschultz - Quiplash
@progosk
@me3dia
@alxp - Space Coyote
@robes - robocop is bleeding
@tavella
@lemurrhea
@cpi - Theta States
@osi
@puffycatpants - grumpybear69
@BullOctorok - prize bull octorok
@fluffybattlekitten - fluffy battle kitten
@sparklemotion
@edlundart
@flameo
@bluffcityjk - JeffK
@audiograins - TwoWordReview
@likeatoaster - likeatoaster
@brundlefly
@chatongriffes
@mikurski
@huck500
@mikepop
@briannaorg - annathea
@clockworkangel - spinifex23
@ladyarkady - arkady
@chrysostom
@obliviscor - you must supply a verb
@violetu
@mroben
@cynical - chrono_rabbit
@Setevin - Tevin
@RedOrGreen
@mmrtnt
@snickersnacks - snacks
@devonian
@robes - Robocop is Bleeding
@hustlecat - Ghostbikes
@kabloomers - metroid baby
@triggerfinger
@andrhia
@ricochet_biscuit
@sublimity
@alexlu - Conspire
@griphus
@subbes
@dragons - Lazaruslong
@lossless - Shortfuse
@conniptions - Motty
@flameo - emjaybee
@lmgm
@SarahElizaP
@scruss
@ou - oulipian
@timmoydaen
@spokenword - bl1nk
@schmod
@pseudonymph
@gas - subversiveasset
@emmling
@komara
@vaguelyartistic
@mrbadexample
@gauche
@ghidorah
@westringiaf
@milkb0at
@johnnydale - Ian A.T.
@cancerman
@dalimind - achrise
@sidereal
@hap_hazard
@meghantopus - MeghanC
@rhaomi
@jackie1776 - Jacqueline
@celandine100 - mkim
@matildaben
@pallas_athena
@coriejweaver - korej
posted by quin at 11:29 AM on September 30, 2014 [8 favorites]

I'm @JohnLeavitt BTW
posted by The Whelk at 11:35 AM on September 30, 2014

It's also easier to just alter the url than it is to use search. So like http://ello.co/cancerman

This is how I've been doing it as well, it's much, much quicker than trying to use the search tool. More reliable as well.
posted by quin at 11:42 AM on September 30, 2014

And I'm @joshmillard.
posted by cortex at 11:54 AM on September 30, 2014

I'm @immlass.
posted by immlass at 12:05 PM on September 30, 2014

I'm @victoriajohnson.
posted by troika at 12:12 PM on September 30, 2014

I'm @Brian_of_Nazareth, and so's my wife!
posted by Chrysostom at 12:25 PM on September 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

I'm @kattullus.
posted by Kattullus at 12:29 PM on September 30, 2014

I'm @rewil.
posted by rewil at 5:51 PM on September 30, 2014

@vaguelyartistic is me, if there's going to be an official list.

I don't check profiles very often here so it's been nice putting some faces to names. I must say you all are a good-looking bunch.
posted by Room 641-A at 9:59 PM on September 30, 2014

In the interests of continuing the mefi invasion onto ello... does anyone have a spare invite they could lob my way?
posted by mr. manager at 10:07 PM on September 30, 2014

I'm @deoridhe because I'm Deoridhe EVERYWHERE.
posted by Deoridhe at 11:41 PM on September 30, 2014

Oh, of course there's a thread on mefi about ello, and I'm late to the party. /facepalm

Well I'm @oceana1009 over there and still have invites if anyone needs one still. Always looking for mefites to add, doubly so if you are an art liking/making person.
posted by everyday_naturalist at 7:36 AM on October 1, 2014

mr. manager, if you still need an invite hit me up on MeMail. Same goes for anybody else.
posted by brundlefly at 12:05 PM on October 1, 2014

HITLER FINDS OUT ABOUT ELLO :

http://meemsy.com/v/22082
posted by shipbreaker at 3:56 PM on October 1, 2014

Late to the party, I'm "Bondcliff"
posted by bondcliff at 6:12 PM on October 1, 2014

Facebook sparked a fierce backlash three weeks ago when it began enforcing a "real name" policy against performers and members of the LGBT community. The company initially dug in its heels, refusing to stop requiring people to use their legal names, inciting hundreds of thousands of people to flee to the quasi-anti-corporate network Ello. Now Facebook is feeling the heat and is slated to apologize for the situation later today, sources tell Valleywag.

*San Francisco Supervisor David Campos's office has confirmed to Valleywag that Facebook has apologized.

We're told the apology will be first issued at a meeting with a coalition of drag queens, LGBT activists, and Supervisor David Campos, all of whom have been pressing Facebook end the discriminatory policy. Before making a public announcement, the company will also outline to activists how it plans to fix its policies.
posted by rtha at 7:14 PM on October 1, 2014

1.) It's immediately viewable by everyone that's following me. I'm not on Facebook anymore but I hear that's the biggest complaint over there now - that your output may not reach all your followers unless you cough up cash.
2.) It's more than 140 characters, handily beating Twitter.
3.) It's got text with HTML in it, and then a photo, and then more text. It could easily have been two images, or four. I could put text sections in-between whatever. Google+ allows for text then an image, but no text then image then text.
4.) Regarding the above - I believe I could approximate this on Tumblr but that platform does not have built-in commenting available, just the weird "reblog and add your thoughts" culture.

Yes, as you mention, all of this (and just about every feature people have talked about in this post, such as robust privacy controls) are available on Livejournal.
posted by Evilspork at 7:20 PM on October 1, 2014 [3 favorites]

Also, if you're creeped out w/ LJ being owned by a bunch of creepy Russians (problematic American privilege, but, OK) then there's also the open source branch of Dreamwidth

... or to pull a Colbert, we either have to put put our money where our mouth is and say that privacy, data ownership and self-determined content filtering is so important that it's worth going back to LJ or Dreamwidth, or realize that none if this is as important as being able to brag about having an account on the zeitgeist or being able to say that you have an invite code.
posted by bl1nk at 7:38 PM on October 1, 2014 [2 favorites]

Got this update in email from Ello:

What’s new today:

Big security force-field
Made it hard for people who weren’t hugged enough as children from spamming
Mobile Ello got way better
You can now cut images & paste them into the omnibar
Squashed lots of bugs

What’s coming very, very soon:

Mute: Hide a user that’s bugging you
Block: Stop a user from seeing or commenting on your posts
Filter adult content: turn it on or turn it off
Extra super surprise awesome emoji thingy that Matt built
posted by Chrysostom at 6:59 AM on October 2, 2014 [1 favorite]

I have friended as many of you as I can, but the list is a long one, so if I didn't follow you yet, don't take it personally.

Also for some reason I'm getting followed by a lot of DJs. I have no idea why. I don't think they're all mefites.
posted by emjaybee at 7:14 AM on October 2, 2014

I'm getting followed by a lot of DJs. I have no idea why.

Hmm, I think I know what's going on...
posted by Ian A.T. at 8:42 AM on October 2, 2014

(Oh wow, Dreamwidth runs on Perl.)

I started mulling over the things that make me prefer Twitter to Livejournal. I like having a mobile client, consistency among posts, better conversation surfacing, lists, and more. Seeing dozens of Mefites jumping onto Ello makes me think there's an obvious desire for a better social network, but I don't think Livejournal is the thing to aspire to.
posted by Pronoiac at 11:26 PM on October 2, 2014

I don't think LJ is that far away from being exactly what the people flocking to Ello want, but their trajectory and momentum still has them getting there long after Ello does or doesn't.
posted by Corinth at 12:01 AM on October 3, 2014 [1 favorite]

Checked it out. Hmmm...maybe when they come up with graphics that aren't inherently annoying.
posted by happyroach at 12:19 AM on October 3, 2014

I'm fffffaster.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 6:44 PM on October 3, 2014

Totally stupid. I give it six months to belly up, at which point they will have harvested enough personal data to make selling it to facebook worthwhile.

People who think this is liberatory are fooling themselves mightily.
posted by spitbull at 7:20 AM on October 4, 2014 [2 favorites]

Big surprise: @renegade-duck.
posted by Renegade Duck at 1:42 PM on October 4, 2014

Updated and sorted list with links for your convenience.

@alexlu - Conspire
@alxp - Space Coyote
@andrhia
@audiograins - TwoWordReview
@bluffcityjk - JeffK
@Bondcliff
@Brian_of_Nazareth - Chrysostom
@briannaorg - annathea
@brundlefly
@BullOctorok - prize bull octorok
@cancerman
@celandine100 - mkim
@chatongriffes
@chrysostom
@clockworkangel - spinifex23
@conniptions - Motty
@coriejweaver - korej
@cpi - Theta States
@cynical - chrono_rabbit
@dalimind - achrise
@davegoodman - Happy Dave
@deoridhe
@devonian
@dragons - Lazaruslong
@edlundart
@emmling
@fffffaster - Joseph Gurl
@flameo - emjaybee
@fluffybattlekitten - fluffy battle kitten
@gas - subversiveasset
@gauche
@ghidorah
@griphus
@hap_hazard
@huck500
@hustlecat - Ghostbikes
@immlass
@inturnaround
@jackie1776 - Jacqueline
@JohnLeavitt - The Whelk
@johnnydale - Ian A.T.
@joshmillard - cortex
@kabloomers - metroid baby
@KathrynT
@kattullus
@komara
@ladyarkady - arkady
@lemurrhea
@likeatoaster - likeatoaster
@lmgm
@lossless - Shortfuse
@lownote
@lyn_never
@mas - Stynxno
@matildaben
@me3dia
@meghantopus - MeghanC
@mikepop
@mikurski
@milkb0at
@mmrtnt
@monospace
@mrbadexample
@mroben
@obliviscor - you must supply a verb
@oceana1009 - everyday_naturalist
@osi
@ou - oulipian
@pallas_athena
@progosk
@pseudonymph
@puffycatpants - grumpybear69
@rebent
@RedOrGreen
@renegade-duck - Renegade Duck
@rewil
@rhaomi
@ricochet_biscuit
@robes - Robocop is Bleeding
@ryanschultz - Quiplash
@sagrei - cmyk
@SarahElizaP
@schmod
@scruss
@Setevin - Tevin
@sidereal
@snickersnacks - snacks
@sparklemotion
@spokenword - bl1nk
@subbes
@sublimity
@tavella
@theyoungroperider - the young rope-rider
@timmoydaen
@triggerfinger
@vaguelyartistic
@victoriajohnson - troika
@violetu
@westringiaf
posted by Renegade Duck at 2:42 PM on October 4, 2014 [3 favorites]

You missed me: @octothorp
posted by octothorpe at 3:36 PM on October 4, 2014

Kattullus has challenged me to a "write flash fiction in the style of another author" game on Ello
posted by The Whelk at 4:03 PM on October 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

@octothorpe, it was all I could do to type this apology (sorry). Thanks to their abuse as …tags, I have a phobia of… uh… those things over the 3 on QWERTY keyboards.

whew
posted by Renegade Duck at 4:57 PM on October 4, 2014

I'm @aubilenon in case anybody's looking for me (they're not)
posted by aubilenon at 4:58 PM on October 4, 2014

Ha ha! I had completely forgotten about the end of the Life of Brian. I was wondering why I couldn't find that username…

Somebody should really pick that up. Wouldn't want it to fall in the wrong hands.
posted by Renegade Duck at 5:01 PM on October 4, 2014

@peteleidy - but I doubt I'll use it much unless they build a lot more features into it.
posted by p3t3 at 5:14 PM on October 4, 2014

I would like to jump aboard this train. Does anyone have an invite code you'd be willing to share?
posted by Dr. Zira at 8:13 PM on October 4, 2014

Non Ello Link to the story
posted by The Whelk at 11:18 PM on October 4, 2014 [1 favorite]

Dr. Zira: MeMailed you.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 3:24 AM on October 5, 2014

@meatbomb is my thing there
posted by Meatbomb at 5:13 AM on October 5, 2014

Hey how do you post inline images there? I see everyone else doing it...
posted by Meatbomb at 6:12 AM on October 5, 2014

Renegade Duck: "@Brian_of_Nazareth - Chrysostom"

This was a Monty Python joke. I'm just @chrysostom.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:17 AM on October 5, 2014

Meatbomb, for images you can either a) drag and drop from your PC; or b) click on the little gray upload icon you get when start to write a post. Leftmost icon on the bottom, looks like two boxes.
posted by Chrysostom at 7:25 AM on October 5, 2014

Thanks for the invites! I'm on as @doctorzira
posted by Dr. Zira at 7:31 AM on October 5, 2014

To people still looking for invite codes, some of the ones I posted up thread still have not been claimed yet.
posted by Librarypt at 8:06 AM on October 5, 2014

I'm finding that I really don't like the interface of ello much. Some annoyances:

* There's no "reload" button on the ello.co/friends page. You have to use your browser's reload

* You have to hover over avatars to see usernames.

* The pale gray buttons are hard to see. It took me forever to figure out how to send my first post since I didn't see the right arrow button.

* I still can't figure out the three horizontal line button in the text entry box. Hitting it seems to (sometimes) create new empty boxes that you can't type into. What is that for? Sometimes it does nothing.
posted by octothorpe at 8:33 AM on October 5, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm 10 days late to the party, is it over yet? Does anyone have a code?
posted by gillianr at 11:10 PM on October 5, 2014

Likewise, any invites going spare?
posted by cbrody at 11:10 AM on October 6, 2014

I'm also late to the party, but would like to see what the party is all about?
posted by lizarrd at 12:11 PM on October 6, 2014

I've got a few left, PM me your email address if you'd like one.
posted by Happy Dave at 12:37 PM on October 6, 2014

Yeah, me too. Memail and I'll send you one.
posted by Chrysostom at 12:38 PM on October 6, 2014

Thanks Chrysostom. I'm @cosmac.
posted by cosmac at 5:15 PM on October 6, 2014

They now have blocking but it might be a little buggy still.
posted by divabat at 5:16 PM on October 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh man, I'd forgotten what it's like to use a social media outlet where I can type up a recipe with markup and everything, and have it look right with a header and photo and unordered list and all that. Man. That's nice.
posted by komara at 6:33 PM on October 6, 2014 [4 favorites]

Thanks for the heads up, divabat. Just went through and blocked all my spammy followers. Seems to have worked?
posted by Chrysostom at 7:02 PM on October 6, 2014

Apologies if anyone has followed me, and I haven't followed back. I tend to react faster when I can easily see you're a fellow mefite, than by hunting through your followers or for a mention in this thread. :)
posted by CancerMan at 9:45 AM on October 7, 2014

Invite codes:

roast-pictures-must-56a02f
not-faces-puzzled-b2388c
soup-prizes-water-give-5489c0
rising-ears-theirs-01c954
alarm-tarts-never-765994
posted by Librarypt at 9:51 AM on October 7, 2014

Late to the party, fashionable, I'd like to think... I'm DuckiDeva on Ello. I haven't done anything with it, I'm still figuring out the interface.
posted by dejah420 at 2:16 PM on October 7, 2014

Wait wait it looks like Ello has been superseded!
posted by Andrhia at 7:10 PM on October 7, 2014 [8 favorites]

The solution is a standard, open, interoperable protocol, like email, not another closed garden.

If MeFi ran a Diaspora pod, I'd pay to join it. Just sayin'.
posted by flabdablet at 7:28 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Andrhia: thank you for that. Owdy is amazing.
posted by divabat at 10:16 AM on October 8, 2014

Thanks, Librarypt! I'm on as lizarrd because why not.
posted by lizarrd at 10:54 AM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

I'm supr, thanks for asking!

And thanks to KathrynT for the invitation, and to Chrysostom for following up with (a still unused) one a little later.
posted by syzygy at 6:19 PM on October 8, 2014

Welp, I tried to follow you all, but I've been told I followed too many users today. My goal for Ello so far? Metafilter users -- all day, every day.
posted by lizarrd at 9:09 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

So does anyone have spare invites for Zombo.com? (giggle)
posted by straw at 12:20 PM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]

Yo straw, I invite you:

1) Type "www.zombo.com" (without quotes) into your browser's address bar
2) In your browser's settngs look for a "set as homepage" (without quotes) checkbox, flag, or similar
3) Do that thing! You are in there dude!
posted by Meatbomb at 5:03 PM on October 9, 2014 [1 favorite]

If someone hasn't already registered zombo.club, I will be disappointed.
posted by cortex at 5:04 PM on October 9, 2014

Wait wait it looks like Ello has been superseded!

love the background image
posted by philip-random at 10:08 AM on October 10, 2014

Ello < Owdy < Ripple
posted by flabdablet at 11:36 AM on October 10, 2014 [1 favorite]

Ello Takes $5.5 Million in VC Money, Signs a Legally-Binding Charter to Never Sell Ads or Data. "the founders registered Ello as a public benefit corporation (PBC) in the state of Delaware"
posted by Nelson at 8:10 AM on October 23, 2014 [6 favorites]

So what’s Ello’s business model if not ads or offload user data to marketers? The idea is to run it as a freemium service — free to use, but with little cosmetic extras like multi-account login or layouts that cost a dollar here or there. Luckily for the Ello team, one of Foundry Group’s big portfolio IPOs was Zynga, a major gaming company whose business rests on in-app purchases.

That seems like a tricky business model to get right. I'm not sure what other choices they have though.
posted by octothorpe at 9:49 AM on October 23, 2014