After waiting for a while to be invited to join Ello, the new social network, it has eventually come through, so I will have something to play and fiddle with over Christmas, setting up a new profile and getting use to how it ticks.
To those who are not aware or heard of Ello, it was set up as an ‘anti facebook’ social network, due to the fact that facebook seems to have no problems sharing personal data and increasing the amount of adverts shown to users.
Ello promises a different way to the free, free, free as long as we control and can sell your user data, which seems to be the business model that so many online companies seem to be adopting and often users aren’t always informed clearly of changes to TOS and many are now worried where their daya is being sold on to.
The approach that Ello is taking is one that is based on a ‘Freemium’ business plan, which will give all users a basic level of service for free and then offer bolt on extras for an extra price. They promise that whichever you choose, free or paid, your personal user data will not be sold on and they will not be having adverts as well.
Time will tell if this is the right approach, but since they launched earlier in the year, they were swamped with requests with people wanting to sign up, hence the invitation only, but it certainly shows that a lot of people are increasingly worried about keeping their personal data safe.
I suppose, it will depend on how much the bolt on extras will cost and how many they manage to upsell to its members, but for the moment it is still in Beta, while they continue to improve the functionality of the basic interface and add further options , and I am looking forward to seeing how this will develop.
I will let you know in a while how I find it when I have had a chance to play with it for a while, and if anyone is on ello, then look me up and add me.
