Ello: Is there anybody in there?

The new “anti-Facebook” social media site Ello launched in March, but only gained mainstream visibility last month, when high-profile drag queens like Ru Paul declared they were leaving Facebook for Ello.

The avowal came after Facebook instituted a new policy forbidding pseudonyms and deleting many drag queens’ profiles. Ello is an advertising-free social networking site that doesn’t give user data to companies, and so might seem like a secure alternative for local Internet users. And its popularity is rapidly growing — Ello is currently inundated by up to 31,000 requests an hour from people who want to use its service, according to the BBC.

In a context where social media activity has been associated with political mobilization, particularly during the January 25 revolution, Ello was pleasantly welcomed by some activists in Egypt. Tarek Shalaby, an activist and Ello user, thinks that the site could play a useful role locally.

“Twitter has 2 million users in Egypt, and Facebook is at 20 million people. It is completely unrealistic to think that Ello is going to have an influential role on the political structure or among activists in Egypt. However, like any other new social media, it does attract a small group of intellectuals and activists who want to do something. It might be a place for revolutionaries to gather. Twitter was like that until after a few months after the revolution. It might be useful,” he said.

You have to receive an invitation to apply to join Ello, a tactic that could deter some users — though the technique was also employed by Facebook and Google+ when they first launched. This could also help keep Ello a small community, which is arguably the way social networks act as alternative media platforms for more homogenous political voices.

A manifesto on Ello’s website declares its distrust in advertisers and social networks that turn users into products.

It has been called the “anti-Facebook” for framing itself in opposition to the social networking giant that openly sells user data to advertisers, and whose pages are plastered with customized ads. Criticizing such tactics, Ello declares, “We believe social media can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce or manipulate.”

Although advertisements are forbidden, creating pages for brands is not. Paul Budnitz, one of Ello’s founders, already has a page up promoting his bicycle company.

The website itself is designed in a minimalist style with lots of white space and black circles. Once you are accepted as an Ello user you can sort your followers into two categories: “friends” or “noise.” Posts from people in the “friends” category will appear on your newsfeed, while posts from the “noise” category won’t.

“The interface is beautiful. It is simple and clean and there are no ads. I really liked that. I went to read about their model which is selling small features instead of ads, and I think that model is better than Facebook selling our information without us getting anything,” Shalaby says.

FreshTracks Capital — a venture capital firm based in Vermont — gave Ello US$435,000 in seed money, which has some users wondering how the site will return the investment without relying on an advertising model. Critics warn that selling premium features won’t be enough to generate revenue.

“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,” developer Aral Balkan wrote on his website.

Shalaby, however, remains optimistic about Ello’s approach.

“If they start selling information or using ads, it would backfire immediately,” he argued. “That means if the VC [venture capital] offers US$200,000, that is a good sum, but it’s not that much. They will try to get enough users to buy small add-ons for small premium fees, like they do on Flickr. If you get a couple of million users who pays for the premium, you will make your money back fast, and the people get ownership and start appreciating that they are not being sold as a product.”

But some think this celebration of Ello is overrated. Unlike other advertisement-free social networking sites like Diaspora, Ello is not encrypted — so even if user data is safe from corporations, it can still be monitored by the government. And given recent reports that Egypt’s Interior Ministry has hired a private firm to monitor social media activity, the sale of user data to companies has become irrelevant for many Egyptians.

But data aside, Ello’s privacy measures leave much to desire. For these reasons, Rasha Abdulla, a social media expert and assistant professor at the American University of Cairo, doesn’t think Ello will catch on in Egypt anytime soon. 

“While Ello may or may not be a more difficult platform for governments to monitor or hack, there are serious concerns about its internal security and privacy settings, as they are right now. Those will definitely need to be changed if it is to compete with the major social networks. For example, right now, once on Ello, everything you post is public,” Abdulla said.

“While most activists assume that what they say online is public, there might still be a time where they want to exchange private messages or communication with each other. Ello, as it is right now, does not allow for that. I trust that the company will come around and add some privacy settings in the near future, but in the absence of that, I don't see how it can compete with something like Facebook, which already has over a billion users,” Abdulla continued.

Between its activist anti-corporate attire and weak privacy infrastructure, only time can tell if Ello will be successful in Egypt — but the government’s increasing online scrutiny might circumvent its growth.