vendredi 10 octobre 2014
A year ago, Ello founder Paul Budnitz was frustrated with all the ad-driven, privacy-compromising social networks, so the established entrepreneur (Budnitz Bicycles, Kidrobot)
decided to form his own. For a year, the site was limited to Budnitz
and his 100 closest friends, but as demand to join increased, he opened
it up to the public. Initially Ello saw a healthy 10 to 15 percent
growth rate -- until a combination of dissatisfaction with Facebook's
name policy, media attention, and word of mouth thrust Ello into the
spotlight. I chatted with Paul Budnitz about Ello's explosive growth,
what it offers that competing networks don't, and when the
much-anticipated app will arrive.
What do you attribute all the recent excitement around Ello to?
I think there's a lot of discontent with the ad-driven networks and advertising in general and what that leads to. It makes social networking not so fun when you feel that there are ulterior motives going on that are not in your best interest. We also just designed something that's really cool and fun to use. I think there's also been some specific events that have happened with a lot of really positive stuff from the queer community coming over that really kickstarted a lot of people moving over -- and the artist community as well.
Dissatisfaction with Facebook and Google+'s name policies has certainly worked in Ello's favor. But how did Ello become the social media destination to migrate to?
Two weeks ago, we were still managing all the email coming in, because we were much smaller than we are now by I don't know how many zillions of degrees. But I know I was sitting in the airport in Chicago, and a few emails popped up asking if you have to use your real name on Ello. I got four or five and said, "No, you don't. You have to follow our rules. You can't do bad or mean things. But other than that, you can do whatever you want." Then suddenly there were 50 emails asking the same question, and then there were 500.
So was it word of mouth?
Yes. We were already growing at 10 to 15 percent a day. Then suddenly we were looking, and all these people were signing up, and everyone was telling everyone else to sign up. Because it's invitation only, you had to know someone on the network to get on. You still do. Or you can request an invite on the home page. We don't do that to be exclusive. It helps us control how fast we're growing. And it's good to grow community through community. You're invited by your friend, and you're more excited about it than if you were randomly signing up. That happened with the LGBTQ community all at once, but simultaneously we got a bunch of press, with some big tech bloggers writing about us. There were some influential design people writing about us, because they thought the design was very elegant. I can't say what started what, but I know that people were all talking about it, and then suddenly it went boom, and then it was like, "Wow, this is neat. Now what do we do?" We fortunately planned for this, but we planned for it to take six months, not six days.
What makes Ello a better user experience than Facebook?
Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest with all these ads have been acting a little bit with impunity. Since Ello doesn't have advertising, there are all these great implications about that. When you do have ads, basically everything you do and [every] decision you make is for the customer, which is the advertiser. On Facebook the user isn't the customer; the user is the product being sold. So every new feature is either a way to show more ads and to collect more data about the users, so the users can then be sold more ads. This whole thing with the naming policy on Facebook shows us that a user who gives their real name is more valuable on Facebook than a user who doesn't, because they can track you your whole life and everything you do or like. That decision of "Let's kick some people off, and we'll scare enough people to stay on and use their real name, and then we'll make more money" isn't about wanting you to be who you really are or transparent to anything; it was about money.
On Ello all you need to get on is an email address. Someone asked me what our user demographic is, and I said, "We have a lot of users, but I don't know anything about them." We don't ask for any information, but any data we do collect is totally anonymized. We're just creating the social network we want to use. We have no pressure to do anything else.
In developing Ello, what were some of the features that were most important to you?
When we were designing Ello, we decided to start from scratch. The original version was totally private, with only 100 people, so we put three pictures on the wall. We put up a picture of Dieter Rams, who is a designer who believed in less but better. We decided we wanted something simple. We thought, What's the least we could do to create a great experience? Because interaction between people doesn't have to be complicated. Then the second picture we put up on the wall was Captain Kirk, because we're all geeks, and because it was also about how a communicator worked. We liked the idea of him holding a communicator. There were no nested menus in a communicator. It was not complicated, so that was really about speed and simplicity. Then the third picture we put up was Kurt Cobain, because who the f--- says we can't do this? There was all this cynicism that said that Facebook has already won, give up. Here we are in Vermont. We're one of the few states in the Union that has outlawed billboards, so the no-ad thing is really in the DNA here. People come here and always say that Vermont is so beautiful. Yeah, it's probably because there aren't Egg McMuffin billboards everywhere. So, yeah, we're doing our own thing.
How do you both add features and keep things simple?
If you go on our home page, there's a features list that shows you all the basic features of Ello that will always be free to use. Those are all fully designed. In fact, Ello will not feel any more complicated. In fact, it's going to feel simpler. There's been a lot of cynicism about Ello in the press, where they say, "They will never survive without showing ads." It's ridiculous, actually, and highly defeatist and sad to say that the Internet should be about that. Here's the cool thing. This is how we make money. Ello is going to have an app store. When you get your iPhone, it already does a lot of great things, but everyone wants a little something extra to feel special. If I had to have every app on the App Store on my phone, then it would look like the Gmail settings page. Hardly anyone uses all the features, so our solution is to create it simple and keep it simple. But if you want a specific feature, you could get it for $1 or $2, and you add that to your Ello, and your Ello functions different than mine for you. You can then tweak things just like you want it for you, and you support the network, which keeps it ad-free, and the Settings page continues to not have that many settings. So it's not going to grow by very much, and then you can add things if you want to.
How long until Ello gets out of beta?
I don't know, but I would be surprised if most of the features on the features list aren't completely up and ready by Christmas, and a lot by Thanksgiving. We did user blocking and muting at the request of the gay community. That feature was lower on our list, but we had so many requests for it right away, for the same reason people left Facebook, so we pushed it to the top, and that was released on Friday. Notifications, bookmarking, and mobile apps are in the works. We got a little slowed down last week, because we had, like, 45,000 people signing up every hour. That was kind of intense and created a lot of phone calls to a lot of programmers, saying, "How do we deal with this?" But I think we dealt with it very well. I think in that entire time, Ello was down for 30 minutes.
When is the Ello app coming out?
The Ello app is far along in development. We decided to launch with the desktop version first, because we didn't want to become a Snapchat-ty thing first, and also because we wanted to get further along with the beta, because everything you do on the Web also has to be done with the mobile devices. So, being a relatively small group, we said, "Let's just do it this way." But there are parts in testing, so it's not super far away both for iPhone and Android.
How do you draw the consumer who's already on a bunch of social media sites and sees adding another as a burden?
Well, honestly, we don't really want to -- meaning at this stage of things, we have as many users as we can handle and a waiting list that is so long, so for a while yet, we're managing explosive growth. But on the other hand, we're six or seven weeks old and still in beta, and I think that over time and as its features get filled out and more and more people are on it, the draw to Ello is the people on Ello and how Ello works. If it's more fun to use and there are better people on it, then it creates motivation. Some people are realizing that maybe this is a better alternative, because Facebook is not a social network; it is an advertising platform.
On our home page, there's our manifesto with two buttons underneath. if you read it and click I Agree, then we take you to a form where you can request an invite. If you click I Disagree, then we just take you to Facebook. We're just being honest. We're saying that if this is for you, this is your alternative. It's whatever people like. But we know if we create a strong community and it's fun to use, that whatever size it is, we've succeeded, and it will grow at whatever pace is the right pace.
One thing that Twitter did early on is court celebrities. Is there a concerted effort on your part to get public figures using Ello? We personally onboarded William Shatner, which is one of the coolest things that's ever happened. We love him, and there are a lot of well-known people who are on or coming on. But I have to say we are not courting celebrities. Again, I think it has to do with the philosophy of quality versus quantity and our desire to create a great network. If we do, we know we have a very strong core for a very good, long-term experience. Plus, from Kidrobot I'm not starstruck. So aside from someone like Shatner, who's just rad, we're not pushing that angle. It's just for cool people.
Paul Budnitz is racing to keep up with Ello's explosive user growth.
I think there's a lot of discontent with the ad-driven networks and advertising in general and what that leads to. It makes social networking not so fun when you feel that there are ulterior motives going on that are not in your best interest. We also just designed something that's really cool and fun to use. I think there's also been some specific events that have happened with a lot of really positive stuff from the queer community coming over that really kickstarted a lot of people moving over -- and the artist community as well.
Dissatisfaction with Facebook and Google+'s name policies has certainly worked in Ello's favor. But how did Ello become the social media destination to migrate to?
Two weeks ago, we were still managing all the email coming in, because we were much smaller than we are now by I don't know how many zillions of degrees. But I know I was sitting in the airport in Chicago, and a few emails popped up asking if you have to use your real name on Ello. I got four or five and said, "No, you don't. You have to follow our rules. You can't do bad or mean things. But other than that, you can do whatever you want." Then suddenly there were 50 emails asking the same question, and then there were 500.
So was it word of mouth?
Yes. We were already growing at 10 to 15 percent a day. Then suddenly we were looking, and all these people were signing up, and everyone was telling everyone else to sign up. Because it's invitation only, you had to know someone on the network to get on. You still do. Or you can request an invite on the home page. We don't do that to be exclusive. It helps us control how fast we're growing. And it's good to grow community through community. You're invited by your friend, and you're more excited about it than if you were randomly signing up. That happened with the LGBTQ community all at once, but simultaneously we got a bunch of press, with some big tech bloggers writing about us. There were some influential design people writing about us, because they thought the design was very elegant. I can't say what started what, but I know that people were all talking about it, and then suddenly it went boom, and then it was like, "Wow, this is neat. Now what do we do?" We fortunately planned for this, but we planned for it to take six months, not six days.
What makes Ello a better user experience than Facebook?
Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest with all these ads have been acting a little bit with impunity. Since Ello doesn't have advertising, there are all these great implications about that. When you do have ads, basically everything you do and [every] decision you make is for the customer, which is the advertiser. On Facebook the user isn't the customer; the user is the product being sold. So every new feature is either a way to show more ads and to collect more data about the users, so the users can then be sold more ads. This whole thing with the naming policy on Facebook shows us that a user who gives their real name is more valuable on Facebook than a user who doesn't, because they can track you your whole life and everything you do or like. That decision of "Let's kick some people off, and we'll scare enough people to stay on and use their real name, and then we'll make more money" isn't about wanting you to be who you really are or transparent to anything; it was about money.
On Ello all you need to get on is an email address. Someone asked me what our user demographic is, and I said, "We have a lot of users, but I don't know anything about them." We don't ask for any information, but any data we do collect is totally anonymized. We're just creating the social network we want to use. We have no pressure to do anything else.
In developing Ello, what were some of the features that were most important to you?
When we were designing Ello, we decided to start from scratch. The original version was totally private, with only 100 people, so we put three pictures on the wall. We put up a picture of Dieter Rams, who is a designer who believed in less but better. We decided we wanted something simple. We thought, What's the least we could do to create a great experience? Because interaction between people doesn't have to be complicated. Then the second picture we put up on the wall was Captain Kirk, because we're all geeks, and because it was also about how a communicator worked. We liked the idea of him holding a communicator. There were no nested menus in a communicator. It was not complicated, so that was really about speed and simplicity. Then the third picture we put up was Kurt Cobain, because who the f--- says we can't do this? There was all this cynicism that said that Facebook has already won, give up. Here we are in Vermont. We're one of the few states in the Union that has outlawed billboards, so the no-ad thing is really in the DNA here. People come here and always say that Vermont is so beautiful. Yeah, it's probably because there aren't Egg McMuffin billboards everywhere. So, yeah, we're doing our own thing.
How do you both add features and keep things simple?
If you go on our home page, there's a features list that shows you all the basic features of Ello that will always be free to use. Those are all fully designed. In fact, Ello will not feel any more complicated. In fact, it's going to feel simpler. There's been a lot of cynicism about Ello in the press, where they say, "They will never survive without showing ads." It's ridiculous, actually, and highly defeatist and sad to say that the Internet should be about that. Here's the cool thing. This is how we make money. Ello is going to have an app store. When you get your iPhone, it already does a lot of great things, but everyone wants a little something extra to feel special. If I had to have every app on the App Store on my phone, then it would look like the Gmail settings page. Hardly anyone uses all the features, so our solution is to create it simple and keep it simple. But if you want a specific feature, you could get it for $1 or $2, and you add that to your Ello, and your Ello functions different than mine for you. You can then tweak things just like you want it for you, and you support the network, which keeps it ad-free, and the Settings page continues to not have that many settings. So it's not going to grow by very much, and then you can add things if you want to.
With each new feature, Ello will actually feel simpler, according to Budnitz.
I don't know, but I would be surprised if most of the features on the features list aren't completely up and ready by Christmas, and a lot by Thanksgiving. We did user blocking and muting at the request of the gay community. That feature was lower on our list, but we had so many requests for it right away, for the same reason people left Facebook, so we pushed it to the top, and that was released on Friday. Notifications, bookmarking, and mobile apps are in the works. We got a little slowed down last week, because we had, like, 45,000 people signing up every hour. That was kind of intense and created a lot of phone calls to a lot of programmers, saying, "How do we deal with this?" But I think we dealt with it very well. I think in that entire time, Ello was down for 30 minutes.
When is the Ello app coming out?
The Ello app is far along in development. We decided to launch with the desktop version first, because we didn't want to become a Snapchat-ty thing first, and also because we wanted to get further along with the beta, because everything you do on the Web also has to be done with the mobile devices. So, being a relatively small group, we said, "Let's just do it this way." But there are parts in testing, so it's not super far away both for iPhone and Android.
How do you draw the consumer who's already on a bunch of social media sites and sees adding another as a burden?
Well, honestly, we don't really want to -- meaning at this stage of things, we have as many users as we can handle and a waiting list that is so long, so for a while yet, we're managing explosive growth. But on the other hand, we're six or seven weeks old and still in beta, and I think that over time and as its features get filled out and more and more people are on it, the draw to Ello is the people on Ello and how Ello works. If it's more fun to use and there are better people on it, then it creates motivation. Some people are realizing that maybe this is a better alternative, because Facebook is not a social network; it is an advertising platform.
On our home page, there's our manifesto with two buttons underneath. if you read it and click I Agree, then we take you to a form where you can request an invite. If you click I Disagree, then we just take you to Facebook. We're just being honest. We're saying that if this is for you, this is your alternative. It's whatever people like. But we know if we create a strong community and it's fun to use, that whatever size it is, we've succeeded, and it will grow at whatever pace is the right pace.
One thing that Twitter did early on is court celebrities. Is there a concerted effort on your part to get public figures using Ello? We personally onboarded William Shatner, which is one of the coolest things that's ever happened. We love him, and there are a lot of well-known people who are on or coming on. But I have to say we are not courting celebrities. Again, I think it has to do with the philosophy of quality versus quantity and our desire to create a great network. If we do, we know we have a very strong core for a very good, long-term experience. Plus, from Kidrobot I'm not starstruck. So aside from someone like Shatner, who's just rad, we're not pushing that angle. It's just for cool people.
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