In an online world dominated by banner ads, sponsored posts, and targeted marketing, we at The Practice were interested to hear about a new site claiming to buck this trend. So is Ello the “antithesis of Facebook”? We wanted to find out…

Social network Ello, has been the talk of the online community for the past week, and it has even been dubbed the new Facebook. Such a magnanimous claim certainly made us curious to investigate! Ello is an ad-free social platform, which initially started as a private forum, consisting of just seven artists and programmers. Now following a redesign, it’s been launched publicly, although still in beta. This means you’ll have to be invited for membership registration, or request an invitation. In terms of features, Ello is similar to that of other social platforms, allowing users to post status updates, links and photos. Notifications, @mentions, and the option to follow others are all included, while private messaging, video posts, and iOS and Android apps are all in the pipeline.

Where Ello differs however, is in its promise to remain an ad-free zone, and refrain from sharing users’ data with third parties. Its website states: “Your social network is owned by advertisers. Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. You are the product that’s bought and sold.” Blocking and muting users also feature meaning you can protect your data, while a real-name policy is not mandatory. Instead then, of relying on advertisers for its revenue stream, Ello will earn money from charging users for premium features, those of which still remain unclear. User data is collected though, via Google Analytics, although the network states that before a user’s information is stored on Google’s servers, individual IP addresses are stripped and made anonymous. It is this, Ello claims, that, “also makes what you do on Ello useless to Google for advertising purposes.”

So could Ello really be a future threat to Facebook? It’s unlikely in our opinion- we highly doubt that strict privacy measures will be a big enough reason for social media users to make the switch. And we certainly don’t see Facebook’s 1.32 billion active monthly users going anywhere soon. That’s not to say Ello hasn’t generated a huge amount of interest- in fact the site has been receiving around 31,000 invite requests per hour. The hype has reached such scale, that invites have also been trading on eBay for up to $100 each. However, we think that once the initial buzz has died down, Ello might lose its appeal, especially when users will have to pay for some of its features. Ultimately though, Ello claims that it doesn’t wish to be seen as a rival to Facebook, with creator Paul Budnitz saying: “We don’t consider Facebook to be a competitor. We see it as an ad platform and we are a network.” With such a strong statement, we hope that Ello does at least make Facebook users aware of how their data is handled- and perhaps invoke change when it comes to online privacy.

Does an ad-free social network appeal to you? Will you join in the future, or perhaps you’re already a member? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this new social network, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital, and share your comments on our Facebook page.