A new social networking site called Ello was launched this year in July. During that time no one would have imagined that it would survive against big-shots like Facebook and Twitter and some even predicted that it would soon become obscure like many others have among the stiff competition. However within a few months of its launch, the new social media has slowly gained significant following among many artists as well as from people in the LGBT community. The Daily Dot described the phenomenon as the gay Facebook exodus.
The site initially got their members to sign-up through word-of-mouth. However, they started to grow quickly as the count of their members began to double each day and soon they witnessed geometrical growth. The interest among people in Ello has turned nuclear now. The founder of Ello, Paul Budnitz has even stated that they are witnessing an unprecedented growth with 4000 new members signing up every hour as people are madly tweeting about it.
Ello is an altogether new social networking experience that empowers people and teaches a lesson to all those other networking sites that manipulates, lies and treats their members as products. The look of the site is a mix of Facebook and Tumblr with a lot of white space. Most of the people who have managed to get the membership of this site are visual artists and coders. The best part of this social media however is that there are no advertisements.
The target audience of Ello is completely different from other social networking sites. This is a site for those who are looking for a clean user interface and for those who want to hide their identity for safety reasons. Such people are being kicked out from Facebook and Ello is welcoming them with open arms.
Ello is currently in the beta testing stage and membership is through invite-only.