Lion of the Blogosphere

Review of Ello

Ello is a new “social networking” site that has somehow gotten a huge amount of free publicity during the last week.

Naturally I wanted to try it. At first I was denied entrance because it’s invitation only, but then I found a black-hat source of invite codes. Is entrance being gated because they lack sufficient server capacity? Or is it a marketing scam to make the site seem more desirable because people want what they can’t have or what seems exclusive?

Ello is like a non-photo-centric Instagram. Why is it like Instagram? Because of the manner that you can comment on posts, and when you are viewing a person’s feed you have the option to click to view either their followers or whom they are following.

The positive about Ello is that it combines blogging with social networking. Facebook is more geared towards updating your friends of your activities, while Ello is really more like a blog which is visible to the whole world and open to comments. It’s like Xanga (remember Xanga?) with a more minimalist design. The minimalist design is a key positive feature. What ruined MySpace was the proleness of the place. By allowing users to be “creative” with the appearance of their spaces, the result was that you’d click on a link to someone’s space and your senses would be offended by a garish display of clashing colors, blinking text, and blaring rap music.

But now let’s get to the part about Ello that sucks. The website is a confusing buggy piece of crap. It took me an hour to figure out how to post a photo and two paragraphs of text under it.

The difficulty of getting into the site and actually using it has the inadvertent effect of improving the quality of the users. The gated entrance and the unintuitive and buggy interface functions to keep out people with lower IQs, the same people who ruined MySpace. Maybe the people who created the site are secret believers in HBD? I didn’t see a single black person using the site.

The total number of people using the site appears, to me, to be far fewer than the media campaign suggests. I would guess there are only about ten thousand people who have joined the site and actually posted anything.

Written by Lion of the Blogosphere

October 2, 2014 at 3:08 PM

Posted in Technology

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30 Responses

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  1. From what I saw of it (and I am not a member but you can click on some profiles) is that is full of the usual SWPL artsy/poseur crowd with pictures of their allegedly interesting trips.

    ASF

    October 2, 2014 at 3:59 PM

    • It’s where the cool people will hang out, but there’s much more money to be made off of everyone else.

      CamelCaseRob

      October 3, 2014 at 7:23 AM

  2. ‘Ello ‘ello ‘ello! Hey guvnuh, looks loik you got yuhself a new website, ay? So does it go? Is it a goer? Know wot I mean? Know wot I mean? Nudge nudge. Know wot I mean? Ay? Ay? A nods as good as a wink to a blind bat! Say no more!

    peterike2

    October 2, 2014 at 4:08 PM

    • Like.

      Truth

      October 5, 2014 at 2:49 AM

  3. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2468652,00.asp

    PCMag

    “New ‘Facebook for Rich People’ Costs Just $9,000 to Join”

    BY CHLOE ALBANESIUS

    SEPTEMBER 16, 2014 04:25PM EST

    Don’t you just hate it when all you want to talk about is your latest all-nighter in Ibiza or how Jeeves packed the wrong Rolex for last weekend’s Hamptons excursion, but your Facebook friends are all “Help me, I’m poor!”

    Not to worry, Netropolitan is here to save you from having to hob-knob with undesirable 99 percenters. And it will only cost you $9,000 a year.

    Netropolitan is a new social network that bills itself as “the online country club for people with more money than time.” It launched today and organizers insist that it’s not a joke.

    The $9,000 fee includes a $6,000 initiation fee, plus a $3,000 annual fee. You must be 21 to join. You’ll supposedly be able to chat with like-minded individuals, though Netropolitan declined to provide details about its user base.

    Netropolitan: “We simply cannot stress enough how important preserving our members’ privacy is to us,” the company said. “Other than announcing that at our launch we already had several hundred members, we will never publicly state the exact number of members in the club. And especially, we will NEVER release or verify the identity of any of our members – ever.

    What does $9,000 get you? Basically a Facebook rip-off. In screen shots, user profiles include access to activity, profile, notifications, messages, location, friends, and followers. An update box lets you tell fellow members “where you are and what you’re up to.”

    Users will also get unlimited cloud file storage, which is “similar to paid services like Dropbox or SkyDrive [now OneDrive] (and might very well replace those services for you),” the company said, without elaborating….

    Oswald Spengler

    October 2, 2014 at 4:22 PM

    • Is entrance being gated because they lack sufficient server capacity? Or is it a marketing scam to make the site seem more desirable because people want what they can’t have or what seems exclusive?

      Ello and Netropolitan’s exclusivity is a marketing gimmick. A great one.

      They’ll rake in cash until the SWPL herd gets bored and migrates to other transitory status-signalling fads.

      The Undiscovered Jew

      October 2, 2014 at 6:05 PM

  4. ” I didn’t see a single black person using the site.” Well hate to break it to you, but there are some sample profiles on the landing page, which include this one https://ello.co/jaymznylon

    rightwingnut

    October 2, 2014 at 6:02 PM

  5. “What ruined MySpace was the proleness of the place. By allowing users to be “creative” with the appearance of their spaces, the result was that you’d click on a link to someone’s space and your senses would be offended by a garish display of clashing colors, blinking text, and blaring rap music.”

    Great post, Lion. That hadn’t occurred to me. I’d always thought that the Facebook takeover was primarily due to its perceived exclusively because you originally needed an .edu email address to join.

    Robert

    October 2, 2014 at 6:21 PM

    • *exclusivity

      I don’t normally care to correct for typos but that reads too funny.

      Robert

      October 2, 2014 at 6:28 PM

  6. The TOOS and grand elites shun social networking like the plaque!

    This goes to show you that society is headed towards the low IQ doldrums because indiviuduals aren’t interested in a meaningful world, just another unhealthy addiction like online porn, non-sensical entertainment for the prolier masses.

    JS

    October 2, 2014 at 7:01 PM

    • your perception of America as a low-IQ place is wrong. Your’re assuming the lest intellectual aspects of America are representative of the entire country when that’s simply not true. Get out more and you’ll see the rest of the world is actually much dumber.

      grey enlightenment

      October 3, 2014 at 12:03 PM

      • Why is it wrong? Compare America with other 1st world nations and get back to me with a response.

        JS

        October 5, 2014 at 11:14 AM

  7. Lion, please do a column on:

    http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/hong-kong-s-protests-are-peaceful-to-a-fault-20141002

    compared to ferguson and OWS.

    uatu

    October 2, 2014 at 7:19 PM

    • Peaceful until the crony capitalist politburo brings down the hammer. They know what Mao would do, they’re just debating when to do it.

      The Undiscovered Jew

      October 3, 2014 at 7:41 PM

  8. O/T – Lion, what do you think of this?

    http://online.wsj.com/articles/business-graduates-show-least-interest-in-their-work-poll-finds-1412222464

    Business graduates, I guess you could include those working in Ibanking and High Finance are the least interested in their work. Self actualization comes from those working in the Social Sciences and STEM. Or maybe this article doesn’t provide enough info. Boring grinds might enjoy their work if they are introverted and uncreative.

    JS

    October 2, 2014 at 7:53 PM

  9. Do TOOs participate in social media?

    Daniel H

    October 2, 2014 at 7:59 PM

  10. (off topic)

    Lion, I’m enrolled at an online college called “Western Governors Univeristy.” I’m taking a course called “Organizational Behavior and Leadership.” Here’s a passage from a particular chapter of the textbook we’re required to read:

    “Researchers in many different countries have studied thousands of sets of identical twins who were separated at birth and raised separately.5 If heredity played little or no part in determining personality, you would expect to find few similarities between the separated twins. But twins raised apart have much in common, and a significant part of the behavioral similarity between them turns out to be associated with genetic factors. One set of twins separated for 39 years and raised 45 miles apart were found to drive the same model and color car. They chain-smoked the same brand of cigarette, owned dogs with the same name, and regularly vacationed within three blocks of each other in a beach community 1,500 miles away. Researchers have found that genetics accounts for about 50 percent of the personality similarities between twins and more than 30 percent of the similarities in occupational and leisure interests.

    Interestingly, twin studies have suggested parents don’t add much to our personality development. The personalities of identical twins raised in different households are more similar to each other than to the personalities of siblings with whom the twins were raised. Ironically, the most important contribution our parents may make to our personalities is giving us their genes!”

    Pretty HBD.

    Gurney Halleck

    October 2, 2014 at 8:45 PM

    • Of course such things are taken as: well yes OF COURSE there is a tremendous genetic component between twins, but there is NO genetic component to race. Now you have to be pretty simple-minded to believe one and not the other, but most people are.

      peterike2

      October 3, 2014 at 10:19 AM

  11. “It took me an hour to figure out how to post a photo and two paragraphs of text under it.”

    I take back every bad thing I said about you, not because my statements weren’t true, but because you are one truly sad man living a truly empty life. You need to find yourself a shicksa, Lion, and put some lovin’ in her oven.

    browndar

    October 3, 2014 at 11:03 AM

  12. Ello will fail like the dozens of other sites that have tried to compete with Facebook. I imagine the person who created it has a huge hole in their wallet and would have made much more money buying Facebook stock than trying to compete with Facebook. Just another example how entrepreneurialism, with a few exceptions, is for suckers and stocks are for winners.

    grey enlightenment

    October 3, 2014 at 11:57 AM

  13. ello profited nicely from world war g.

    As you probably know, facebook requires its users to use their real name. This policy would obviously steer someone like lion or me away from facebook because if our bosses found out that we …gasp.. believed that there might be an IQ gap between blacks and whites, then we would summarily lose our jobs and the local paper would tar us as The Racists Next Door.

    The SWPL brogrammers that created Ello realized that they could use facebook’s real name policy to steal customers from facebook and to generate publicity for their social network. Of course, they can’t appeal to people like lion, so they manufactured an LGBT rights issue out of the real name policy.

    https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=lgbt+facebook+real+name&tbm=nws

    That’s 22,000 news articles talking about how facebook’s real name policy is discriminatory against gays, and how ello loves gay people and how it will let gay people use whatever name they wish.

    A big part of value transference is manufacturing needs and then selling those needs to the gullible public. This has made a lot of people rich. Ello decided to one up this by not only manufacturing a need but also by manufacturing an injustice. If you want to get rich in america, either manufacture a need or manufacture an injustice. The latter has worked well politically, and it seems like its finally trickling into the business world.

    Josh

    October 4, 2014 at 3:01 AM

  14. Ello’s VCs also backed the unfortunately named ISIS for Women.
    http://www.freshtrackscap.com/portfolio-fund2-companies/ISIS
    http://www.isisforwomen.com/
    Not a lot of brand equity there, I’m guessing.

    Nedd Ludd

    October 4, 2014 at 12:41 PM

  15. But it says one can “request an invitation.” It seemed to just want my email, but is there some further catch to it? I didn’t go all the way.

    Sheila Tone

    October 4, 2014 at 8:18 PM

    • The catch is that after you request an invite, you won’t get one. You can only get an invite from an existing member.

      Lion of the Blogosphere

      October 4, 2014 at 11:19 PM

  16. Lion: “Ello is really more like a blog which is visible to the whole world and open to comments. It’s like Xanga (remember Xanga?) with a more minimalist design.”

    So, basically, Blogger, then?

    Truth

    October 5, 2014 at 2:44 AM


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