{"id":1616,"date":"2014-10-06T07:35:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T07:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkstream.net\/blog\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2018-08-03T11:44:13","modified_gmt":"2018-08-03T11:44:13","slug":"review-ello-social-network","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.silkstream.net\/blog\/2014\/10\/review-ello-social-network.html","title":{"rendered":"Review of Ello Social Network"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Ello<\/p>\n

Ello emerged out of nowhere earlier this week, making a phenomenal impression on the internet \u2013 internet marketers especially. There\u2019s been massive hype surrounding Ello with big news publishers such as Financial Times, BBC News, Forbes, etc, all reporting on Ello\u2019s quest for internet domination! (Albeit humbly and with great respect toward its users\u2026) In the past few days, since Ello\u2019s public launch, they have experienced over 30,000 new user sign-ups an hour<\/em> at its peak.<\/p>\n

What is Ello?<\/h2>\n

Ello promotes itself as an anti-advertising social network that cares about the privacy of its users. Ironically, the social network was shared and discussed all over Facebook, Twitter and Google+. But. <\/strong>There was a reason for that. Ello, whilst still in beta, is invite only. Only the coolest of the elite can get the VIP code in. (Or those who know how to beg\u2026)<\/p>\n

So I scored myself an invite!<\/h2>\n

Didn\u2019t know what to do with my invitation code once I was given it to be honest. Their homepage didn\u2019t give a lot away about how to enter your invite code. I\u2019ll admit now embarrassingly that I did have to Google it, but I found that I wasn\u2019t the only one and excitedly clicked the URL to the page on Ello where I could register using my code.<\/p>\n

At first, I was a little lost. I saw on my stream that my friend who invited me was automatically added to my Friends list. I immediately went to invite another friend, knowing that two friends is definitely less shameful than one\u2026 Generating new invite codes is easy enough, and each new account receives 5 extra invites! Which can of course be manipulated in its usual way\u2026 Not a revolutionary invite system.<\/p>\n

\"Ello<\/p>\n

The first thing you\u2019ll notice on Ello is the minimalist black-and-white design of the website. Very clean, flat design with its Courier New style font (that\u2019s actually Atlas Typewriter \u2013 I checked) that keeps the design simple and looking a little nerdy if I\u2019m honest. Which is okay. That alone might appeal to the hipsters, and the whole thing does seem a little artsy but what can you expect from a bunch of artsy founders.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t find it particularly user-friendly at first. I appreciate that it\u2019s still in beta and there\u2019s a lot of bugs crawling that will get fixed soon I\u2019m sure. But navigation is a little confusing to the Ello newcomer. I\u2019m unsure as to whether that\u2019s down to the overly minimalist design that almost expects everybody to already know where everything is, or that it\u2019s just different from what we have come to expect from social networks that seem to throw so many options at you, we\u2019re not sure what to do with them all.<\/p>\n

\"Ello<\/p>\n

The navigation format, though looks extremely simple looking at it now, bewildered me a little at first. I assumed that the far left image icon featuring the outline of a person with a + sign over him was an \u201cAdd Friend\u201d icon. It actually means \u201cDiscover\u201d as you can see upon hovering over it. So now you can search for friends and \u201cnoise\u201d \u2013 whatever that means. When I think of search though, I think of the magnifying glass icon or something similar that we have just grown accustomed to recognising as a search tool. That icon doesn\u2019t really identify with me as being a search icon. Though I guess, once you know that it\u2019s not for adding friends, you don\u2019t have to learn it twice. Currently you can only search through users, but they will be adding content search in the near future so that you can search through posts containing the query and not just user profiles.<\/p>\n

As for what that mysterious Noise is\u2026<\/h2>\n

Not entirely sure how it works exactly, but from what I gather it\u2019s just a way of organising your Ello connections. No one but you is able to see how you categorise users between Friends and Noise. So you are free to politely add users and categorise them as Noise so you don\u2019t have to tolerate their intolerable whatever within your stream. Instead you are able to browse through your Noise separately when you want to. Ello states that there is no proper way to use the Friends\/Noise categories but it allows the user a way to manage their own social clutter. I think I like that.<\/p>\n

\"Ello<\/p>\n

While Friends opens up a Tumbler-esque stream of your friend\u2019s posts, clicking on Noise will open up your noisy connections in a grid layout that\u2019s easy to scroll through and browse in a lazy manner.<\/p>\n

Ello Profile<\/h2>\n

The first thing you\u2019ll probably want to do is fill in your profile and throw your first message out into the Ello world. Your bio allows for 192 characters which is pretty generous these days. You are also presented with an option to add Links. Yes, it actually says \u201cLinks\u201d and not \u201cLink\u201d. They are actually encouraging you to put up multiple links. And they are FOLLOWED :O !!!<\/strong><\/p>\n

One thing that I noticed when I had created my profile was the vast empty space at the top of my profile. I dismissed it as some kind of bug, but after much browsing through other user profiles, I saw that you can actually change your profile banner image (like Twitter\u2019s one but huge \u2013 kinda like how Google+\u2019s one used to be. Just ridiculously huge\u2026). But there was no indicator as to how I was supposed to do that. I went through my profile settings with a fine-toothed comb. Until I realised that it probably had something to do with that big white space at the top of my profile. So I just clicked it. And I got an upload image popup. But there was no text or indicator at all other than the pointy finger icon \u2013 which admittedly should have been clue enough.<\/p>\n

\"Ello<\/p>\n

Posting on Ello<\/h2>\n

Posting to Ello is simple and every page features the Ello \u201cOmnibar\u201d. The Ello Omnibar is the black speech bubble that appears beside your profile image allowing you to post, comment, mention and (eventually<\/em>) send private messages to friends.<\/p>\n

\"Ello<\/p>\n

Adding images to your post is just as easy as dragging an image from your computer to the Omnibar. Video integration has yet to be implemented but will include YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram and Vine. My second post, without having read any FAQs or markdown help, I attempted an image with bold text (tried in the way that Google+ works with * asterisks enclosing the phrase to be bolded) and a hashtag. Asterisks cause the text to become italic and hashtags currently have no clickable or noticeable function. There is no mention of hashtags on their Feature List under Built or<\/em> Coming Soon.<\/p>\n

\"Ello<\/p>\n

Highlighting unpublished text within the Omnibar activates a small pop up over the highlighted text giving you the option to bold, italicise or link out from the anchor text. When typing, the black Omnibar will turn grey, unless you have @mentioned another user in which case it will turn yellow. According to Ello, once private messaging has been implemented, the Omnibar will turn red when you mention a user with 2 @@s (e.g. @@riaparish) which will indicate that you are sending that person a private message.<\/p>\n

\"Ello<\/p>\n

Using Ello Markdown To Style Your Ello Posts<\/h2>\n

Aside from the WYSIWYG post editor, Ello uses markdown to format its posts.<\/p>\n