[iDC] Ello--Alternative to Facebook

[Dima Strakovsky]

http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ello-inc
Yeah, their funding is pretty front and center. Though I would say it's very minimal - I think just to proof out an idea. 
A little vague in terms of how they are adding feature sets. 
At this point lots of people joining is very good for them as they are heading for Round A. Stickiness of users might not be an issue yet. At least it's not for some VCs.

The cost of switching from FB is quite high and at this point it's really tough to leave that network. However, FB is very vanilla and intentionally sensors it's users to keep itself vanilla. 
So if Ello really appeals to more niche markets it might have a shot. 

Having said all this. I think that there should be some alternative models of funding (current US mode of thinking is that everything is a startup) that take into account that VC route produces very predictable results. Not necessarily "evil", just predictable. And that there could be a service that sidesteps FB and Twitter model completely and doesn't have to compete with them. 



On Sep 26, 2014, at 11:20 AM, Steve Rhodes wrote:

> Ello has taken $435,000 in VC funding so far
> 
> http://betabeat.com/2014/09/ello-founder-says-vc-funding-is-no-big-secret-thats-silly/
> 
> But the biggest problem is it seems pretty much a ghost town so far
> 
> Lots of people joining, but not many posting or commenting so far.
> 
> It is prettier than facebook, but while facebook has plenty of faults it also has features people use (and their friends using them):
> 
>  There are a lot of progressives as uncritically excited by ello as techcrunch is by whatever the newest startup is.
> 
>  I've seen too many new things come and go to not be skeptical. 
> 
>  A facebook alternative would be good, but even if ello or something else does well it progressives will still have to use Facebook if they want to actually reach people.
> 
> I'm actually more hopeful about the relaunch of http://upcoming.org by Andy Baio (who pointed out Elmo's VC funding) as open platform in addition to Facebook events. 
> 
> He raised over $100,000 on kickstarter
> 
> http://mashable.com/2014/06/01/upcoming-org-founder-i-wont-sell-out-again/
> 
> Groups and individuals will still need to use Facebook events, but hopefully they will also post to upcoming.org as well as their own website (not everyone is on Facebook and even if you are it is easy to miss events if they aren't in your network)
> 
> -- 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steve Rhodes - photojournalist
> 
> http://www.corbisimages.com/photographer/steve-rhodes
> 
> http://www.demotix.com/users/steve-rhodes/profile
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity
> 
> List Archive:
> http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/
> 

Dmitry "Dima" Strakovsky
Associate Professor of Intermedia
University of Kentucky
http://www.shiftingplanes.org




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/attachments/20140927/65b2f7bf/attachment.html>