Yes definitely what we needed was more social media: the Ello thread

when i think back to 2014, i def think "you know what I could have used is even further brain balkanization"

NB if you are looking for invites go here ello invites

Yes definitely what we needed was the visionary D-40 thread Yes definitely what we needed was more social media: the Ello thread

is ello your girlfriend?

why u mad

gucci isnt on it so i guess im never joining

so is it like… british?

is anyone posting to it or?

i looked at this yesterday, i don't know if i'm being pedantic but this seems kinda weak considering this thing's usp is no ads:

How does Ello support itself?
Ello is free.

We occasionally offer special features to our community of users. You can choose to support Ello by paying a very small amount of money to add that feature to your Ello account.

You're never obligated to pay anything, but by choosing to buy a feature for a very small amount of money now and then you support our work, and help us make Ello better and better.

like offer & special & choose & very small amount feel kinda generically, persuadingly ad-ish for a passage wedged into a manifesto full of righteous & puritan anti-advertising bluster.

I know everyone is suspect of this but it's kind of fun to have no real names and people just posting random gifs. I'm sure it'll get boring and stupid eventually.

I know everyone is suspect of this but it's kind of fun to have no real names and people just posting random gifs. I'm sure it'll get boring and stupid eventually.

It's called tumblr and it's been around for several years now.

Is Ello the next makeoutclub?

People getting snarky about this creating strawmen who are signing up for Ello because they buy into its idealism or aesthetic when people are signing up because why not, it's free and other people are doing it and maybe it'll be cool but it'll be easy to ditch if it's not.

People getting snarky about this creating strawmen who are signing up for Ello because they buy into its idealism or aesthetic when people are signing up because why not, it's free and other people are doing it and maybe it'll be cool but it'll be easy to ditch if it's not.

otm

Does any part of this thing actually work correctly

I've already seen enough people who ARE buying into its idealism etc. that I can say it's not just strawmen.

it's weird that this goes back to "no real names"
apparently the movement toward integrity of selves has had its critics

this is basically twitter and tumblr right

I've already seen enough people who ARE buying into its idealism etc. that I can say it's not just strawmen.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, September 25, 2014 3:05 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe ... I ... am the straw man

Honestly it doesn't seem very good right now.

It looks bad enough on a desktop. I've heard it's useless on a phone.

the most interesting thing about this is how everyone was THANK GOD SOMETHING THAT'S NOT FACEBOOK

Without likes or favs, it doesn't have that instant gratification of people approving of something you posted without actually commenting on it. It seems shallow but people post on social media for that tiny charge of accomplishment.

i def do

Great post.

?

Just a joke. Giving you a verbal fav so you could have that charge of accomplishment.

omg ty

curious why this is gaining traction suddenly when other similar things have failed

exclusivity imo. anything site that has a modern design + invite only will make at least a little bit of buzz

Not sure. G+ and Diaspora had the same invite-only beta periods, and Diaspora also had the anti-advertising stance and all the advance word of mouth that ended up resulting in nothing. Ello is obviously backed/steered by some shadow PR person/org to get so viral so fast.

g+ and diaspora had similar buzz and invite seeking iirc

curious why this is gaining traction suddenly when other similar things have failed

― ciderpress, Thursday, September 25, 2014 2:58 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

gays

people are just bored and there's a relative lull in the outrage-cycle rn, so this is something to go "huh" at for a minute.

i said something on fb last night like "it's the 'hey, squirrel!" nature of the internet." fb has been running on fumes for so many years, it's surprising its replacement hasn't come along already (twitter serves a different purpose).

This has a different angle to both twitter and facebook (but maybe closer to the former than the latter) - your grandfolks aren't on it and Diddy isn't on it, and that seems to be a definite selling point in both cases.

There's a certain amount of "Oh boy now I can just follow my friends", which I remember fondly from the dawning of Facebook :)

I do like though that if you're following someone, the two categories are 'Friends' and 'Noise'.

the entire visual aesthetic screams "steampunk without the frills" to me

xp: and no inspirational/self-actualization/libertarian image macros!

can u embed imgs from elsewhere somehow or do you have to upload them to do that

No embeds.

i see others embedding

Then why did you ask?

god

What is your Ello name, I really really want to follow you on there

Hi. Is there someone good at answering questions here, preferably not a librarian, who could tell me if it is possible to post a picture on this new thing called Ello without downloading the picture to your computer then uploading it. Thanks!

Literally googled "embeds on ello"

http://gizmodo.com/what-is-ello-1639054383

You can post short messages, add photos, and @ reply your fellow Ello-ers. You can add links and whatnot, but no embeds (yet, presumably), however Ello does boast in-line emoji integration.

welp
https://ello.co/waxpancake/post/oy73kFfDdhOPh8Jv9z9pFA

'boast'
i am so sure
that's like the tumblr error msg i got today 'something is wack'

welp
https://ello.co/waxpancake/post/oy73kFfDdhOPh8Jv9z9pFA

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, September 25, 2014 3:31 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh wello

Boasting about emoji integration is wack, for sure.

less consume more commune sounds great until you realize consume is your comfortable background setting for any sm platform and you can't imagine what commune means beyond like 'do nothing'

*calls friend says hi*

Kind of funny to see actual proper beta software in widespread social use, like I added someone as Noise because they're smart but I don't actually know them, and then I had to add them again because lolbeta, but by normal social media metrics that's a weird passive aggressive things to do.

i started a thread on this one once. wonder what happened with it.

http://www.stack.fm/

@mavenmaven add me 4 maven thoughts

there is some charm to "finding your friends" again after years of aggregating people and friend bloat

apparently there will be this:
Love + Love bookmarking stream

i started a thread on this one once. wonder what happened with it.

http://www.stack.fm/

I sort of vaguely know the guy behind it, he made the fairly staggering decision to seek out no less than €100,000 on indiegogo to get it built. Of course the campaign failed dismally because he never managed to satisfactorily explain why he needed so much money to make a social network. So I'm kind of lol'ing now that ello is taking off with the exact same principles that stack had.

Given the initial massive excited burst G+ had and how useless it ended up being, I'm not that moved by this thing.

we had fun for a day or two iirc

not gonna lie, knowing someone's relationship status was often useful

Some people make you 'ask' for that now on fb. Not Useful!

what a stupid feature

@mavenmaven add me 4 maven thoughts

― mattresslessness, Thursday, 25 September 2014 23:11 (Yesterday) Permalink

Glad u could make use of my visionary thread

I sort of vaguely know the guy behind it, he made the fairly staggering decision to seek out no less than €100,000 on indiegogo to get it built. Of course the campaign failed dismally because he never managed to satisfactorily explain why he needed so much money to make a social network. So I'm kind of lol'ing now that ello is taking off with the exact same principles that stack had.

Um, that's an astonishingly small amount for the proposed work, like Ello has 5x that and looks like literal shit (tho that's its 'thing')

I like it because it's more random and isolated feeling than fb or twitter. all my friends do is post animated gifs without context. all the whitespace is nice. it's basically like a stupid messageboard. like ilx!

"looks like literal shit"

looks like figurative shit

akm's top friend.

otm is still available

https://ello.co/markzuckerberg haha

https://ello.co/ass hehehe

Basically it makes me think of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LDVZFHywzg

Um, that's an astonishingly small amount for the proposed work, like Ello has 5x that and looks like literal shit (tho that's its 'thing')

Why does it need €100,000, let alone $435,000, to set up a website? Why does it need any money at all? It's just writing code, which you can do in your spare time. Zuckerberg did it out of his dorm room.

It's the 'gradually turning into unusable shit' that costs the big bucks iirc

you gotta buy a bunch of those computers without monitors, and shelves for them

FYI: EC2 instances cost money.

Holy smokes. They are running on Heroku. A CPU is $34.50 per month ($$$)!

If they are using Heroku Postgres (120 GB RAM, 1 TB storage, 500 connections): $3,500.00 per month!

i.e. the cloud sucks

Can you really not embed images?

I've been told that posts are public and search engine searchable

@mavenmaven add me 4 maven thoughts

― mattresslessness, Thursday, 25 September 2014 23:11 (Yesterday) Permalink

Glad u could make use of my visionary thread

― deej loaf (D-40), Thursday, September 25, 2014 7:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

touche schlump

welp
https://ello.co/waxpancake/post/oy73kFfDdhOPh8Jv9z9pFA

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, September 25, 2014 2:31 PM (Yesterday)

more backlash
https://aralbalkan.com/notes/ello-goodbye/

(same backlash)

otm is still available

― sarahell, Friday, September 26, 2014 2:41 AM (2 days ago)

Not anymore.

uncleshavedlongcock is still available

Stickin w friendster

Just tried to make use of my invite; site seems to be down.

I'll use this after it gets acquired by Groupon or whatever

I only joined FB about 3 years after it took off, and reluctantly (and then didnt use it for 12 months). I jumped on G+ and Dreamwdith right away so I could nab usernames, and theres a temptation do to that here too but I have not once posted on my G+ or Dreamwidth account so screw that (I do use G+'s hangouts chat app tho)

Still hardly ever use twitter either, and a large chunk of my friends only post/chat there, and I am genuinely missing things theyre up to. Which faintly annoys. but eh, they use the same argt about FB.

dreamwidth

hadn't heard of dreamwidth until now, kinda love the name

it was a LiveJournal replacement. No one uses it.

(amazingly, some hardcore holdout friends of mine still use both Livejournal, AND Usenet ffs)

I've got like 5 g+ accounts that I never use.

i swear to god i got a Yahoo! Groups invitation in my e-mail today.

Wow Yahoo Groups still exist!?

I was even suprised the other day to find Myspace seems to still be going (and is used by some bands and whatnot even tho, why would you when theres Bandcamp and Soundcloud?)

i still have an earthlink e-mail address, maybe that's why i got it...

Probably for the same reason you'd use a Hotmail acct xp

bc it's the account i used to sign up for ilx?

things like this always make me think about how I'm pretty calcified in my internet habits, or it feels that way - like, new platform? lol whatever, feel like I've got what I need here chum, you kids have fun with it tho

I go where the (bulk of the) action is, generally speaking. Thus in my internet life its gone Usenet --> LiverJournal --> ILX/FB (with a tiiiiny smidge of twitter). But all along its been about a combo of blogging and discussion for me (as opposed to posting links/social justice/soundbites). I cant for the life of me work out what ello would offer.

Liverjournal? lol, nice freudian slip. Also, I forgot about IRC.

Actually yeah Livejournal is what Ello reminds of in its scope (no celebs, not your grandparents). Except LJ without decent privacy options, which appears to be largely missing the point.

It's interesting to see people complain about what they now consider standard social media features, as if the idea is to be another Facebook.

It would be funny if there was a huge migration back to Livejournal. I know that's not how the internet works, but I'd do it.

Has LJ already revamped/rebranded itself like MySpace did?

LJ has made some cosmetic changes in the past few years but it doesn't really need to be remade or rebranded b/c it remains very popular in russia

yeah I'd go back to LJ if everyone else did(it had the friend-feed wall concept waayyyy before FB did for starters) but given its now Russian run who knows how safe it is any more. i peep it v occasionally but haven't posted in some years.

friend of mine went on a tear on twitter lately telling the sad story of LJ's core communities and its depopulation to another friend

I'm long on email and "whatever mobile group chatting service my friends are on" as the social networks that will endure

I'm on here as @drunkdalek

design kinda makes me think of a gawky 90s tphile that says BEST VIEWED IN A 9PT MONOSPACED FONT at the top

Got my invite (I've decided to join, if only to 'park' my name but will see how it goes) but on trying to join, it redlights my password choice no matter what I put in there and won't let me proceed to 'create account'. Whywhywhywhy?

I can't figure out how to post an image
Lol/sob

i've only been able to do it by dragging an image from my desktop into their weird update box.

If you click in the posting box (marked 'Say Ello'), an 'Upload' icon appears underneath the box. You can use that to browse and select images from hard drive etc. As previously mentioned, you can't embed images from other sites.

Got my invite (I've decided to join, if only to 'park' my name but will see how it goes) but on trying to join, it redlights my password choice no matter what I put in there and won't let me proceed to 'create account'. Whywhywhywhy?

That might be because it does not like your choice of user name, particularly if someone else has it.

Still waiting on my invite, but looking at the sample profiles I actually don't like the design so far, it feels very forced minimalist in a way that doesn't actually make it more readable.

Also it seems to lose some of the functionality of fb that is actually good (maybe they will add later?) such as embedding video content.

it feels very forced minimalist

I guess that's a matter of taste, although I think it's hard to argue that it's not much more readable than, say, Facebook. I like the look of it personally, as in I find it attractive (and I've always disliked the basic look of Facebook, let alone with the addition of ads and multiple sidebars etc.). That doesn't mean I'm going to use it though.

I like that it has less clutter, but at the same time I find the spacing awkward and I don't like the typeface, and there's too little use of design elements that might help separate one thing from another. It's very tumblresque, which I guess a lot of people like.

this thing looks like total ass

ty

like, I'm talking an entire, unappealing behind dripping with cracksweat

every eyeless smiley face sticking out like an overripe whitehead

...on an ass?

imagine reading status updates...on an ass

someday, you will

Is the main font Courier? I've always liked that style of typeface. It's personal taste, I suppose. I also like that it's just black and white (and a bit of grey).

I don't like the typeface, it looks like a high school poetry zine

can't wait for november 2014 when nobody gives a shit about this anymore

could even be october 2014

I don't like the typeface, it looks like a high school poetry zine

That may be why I like it (or some similar association).

could even be october 2014

Yes, I see a lot of people joining up but apparently not in a hurry to post anything much.

I think I generally don't like this trend of "hip-looking shit just appearing before your eyes unexplained" in web design, app design, etc.

can't wait for no one to care about this either so i can be myself, maven huffman, in peace.

haha apparently I have broken my ability to post to Ello by trying to post a Youtube link to a braying donkey

I think I generally don't like this trend of "hip-looking shit just appearing before your eyes unexplained" in web design, app design, etc.

I think I kind of understand what you mean. It ties in with what you said about Tumblr, in that a lot of Tumblr blogs aspire to looking sort of plain, but in an 'artistic' way. But if you don't like that, how do you like things to look?

I guess that was a little broad, I mean sometimes that style can look great. I just don't like seeing functionality sacrificed for it. I hate when I can't figure out what button is what on a tumblr page because someone went "minimal"

I certainly agree with that. As an aside, despite dabbling in using it, I must admit I am generally mystified by Tumblr, e.g. the fact there is generally no interaction (at least not publicly visible) between users other than clicking on reblog or like.

Tumblr is really where the Disqus commenting system took off, so maybe you're just looking at the wrong tumblr blogs?

Maybe. I have a Disqus account but I didn't like the way Disqus looked when combined with the Tumblr theme I'm using.

Also, I don't understand why they saw fit not to incorporate commenting into the design, making it unnecessary to fiddle around with something like Disqus.

My chosen username is not actually in use on the site, which is why I want to grab it NOW.

I would totally nab a popular name/company's name now, just in case it does blow up. Then get a bit of cash when you sell it later.

Companies are already exercising rights to deny users names. Clickhole did it to someone yesterday.

I guess if you have a legitimate reason for taking that username and the company isn't huge/public, it'd be easier to pull off?

I think there has been some legislation passed against that sort of thing since the original days of domain name squatting

http://www.nissan.com/Lawsuit/The_Story.php

^ informative read

ok i just posted a gigantic image to the three people who can see it

i always want to be in on the goldrush just to stake out my space but really this looks so eh

what does "noise" mean? noise is a good thing imo, so i am confused

When someone posts too frequently and isn't entertaining enough, you can move them into the "noise" feed so that it won't ruin the flow of your hilariously engaging "friends" feed

dang that's cold!

Someone who understands a lot more about design than me explains why the design is terrible:

https://medium.com/@jvdgoot/ello-a-design-disaster-d53022ab3a62

*farts*

ironically, if this were ello that would signify the equivalent of liking my post

I attempted to post a link to http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com with the tag "looking forward to Ello's inevitable appearance here" but Ello wouldn't let me, lol

I gather noise is like ILX's killfile

"noise" kind of seems like "people I will not defriend but only check their feed if I'm really really bored" which makes sense to me as a feature. I have a feeling facebook's newsfeed algorithm overthinks things and probably creates feedback loops with seeing certain people's stuff while letting me entirely forget about other people.

When someone posts too frequently and isn't entertaining enough, you can move them into the "noise" feed so that it won't ruin the flow of your hilariously engaging "friends" feed

How is this any different from the "unfollow" (nb: not unfriend) function in FB? I already have a reasnoably large list of "friends" whose posts I pretty much never see on my FB feed because who wants 237846785648935 posts about puppies to be rescued from pounds/puppies beaten by their owners/OMG SAVE ALL THE PUPPIES. Not to mention the compulsive "post six youtubes a day" music fiends.

I'm hardass with FB. I have only ever blocked one person, and defriended maybe 10, the rest I simply unfollow, and add to a filter so when I post they dont see my posts, so for all intents and purposes to them, I dont use FB (jokes on you, you boring meme posting hippies).

ello.co

2014-2014

haha

What Was Ello?: A Symposium

fuckin' ello sending me earnest messages about their monetary philosophy when they still haven't given me an invite, smh

Someone on my FB feed today liked an AFP post informing all and sundry she's on ello now. Says it all really.

yeah got same today, do not have invite yet, feel like I'll be getting a "goodbye" e-mail before I ever get one

Guys, pm me I'll get you invites

do you have guess papers as well?

fuckin' ello sending me earnest messages about their monetary philosophy when they still haven't given me an invite, smh

lol same

um, yes?

Xpost

Hey everyone! Am I late?

http://img.ifcdn.com/images/99c80658004ac516991918fc63fcd207664ea5f937e73e91a0a9fcf6f0b66400_1.gif

I'm starting to see ello talk on my FB again...is the renaissance imminent?

I haven't discontinued the emails yet, so I know they just implemented emojis! That must be what's kickstarting the renaissance. :P

advertising-free ello was pleased to email me this morning about the new Ello x Threadless T-shirt store

http://i.imgur.com/L6HFZoV.png

Fucking thank your for your continuous stream of sparsely designed & absolutely uninteresting bullshit marketing emails, ello.

Just checked, it's still there.

This reminds me a lot of the delusional kid who would start yet another pointless campus litmag because, you know, the other ones just weren't getting it right and only he had the vision to create something truly underground and beautiful drawing on the same crappy talent pool as every other publication on campus

Just checked, it's still there.

And again, still there. The most recent post in my follow feed is from October 2014.

I'll be happy when people ello takes the place of poor misunderstood Google+ as the butt of social media jokes.

March is NSFW Month on Ello!

http://gizmodo.com/ellos-death-rattle-will-you-stay-if-we-give-you-porn-1689003075

this is still going, and now branded as 'the creators network'.
just logged in for the first time in years.
its not the most compelling experience.

I still get the emails

i logged in purely to switch the emails off, and thought i would have a bit of a wander around.
as i am not a creator i got bored very quickly.

yes whenever I get an email from ello I think "hahahaha I remember that". you'd think the timing would be ripe for a compelling FB alternative again, now, but we'll see. ello ain't it

'...ellooooooooooo!'

you'd think the timing would be ripe for a compelling FB alternative again, now, but we'll see. ello ain't it

another reason i thought i'd have a look to see if it had improved given all the original hype re 'no adverts ...' etc.
turns out it hasn't at all.
admittedly the site seems to work better, but i care not re an excess of art student projects (things i just dont care about #32).

tumblr and instagram both already exist, so...

Remember when?

Anyway it disappeared last year. A post-mortem.

https://waxy.org/2024/01/the-quiet-death-of-ellos-big-dreams/

yeah i went to look for it a while ago and found several other things that now use the Ello name

woof, that article is a burn.