I’ve heard quite a bit of buzz from this new social media site that people are calling “Anti-Facebook”, so I decided to check it out. I didn’t necessarily get an account, but I did look at some of the favourite user profiles that were available on the home page.

Some quick thoughts right off the bat are that, I actually like the simplicity of the website. It’s refreshing to have a black and white page with no advertisements, and I think that the old school text is cute. However, I am a little curious about how much I will have to pay to form groups, events, and video posting, as it is currently a “small amount of money”. Basically Ello is not sure what price to charge, as it is contingent of how many users they acquire. Personally, I mainly use Facebook for events, groups, and casually looking at news pages that I follow.

Nonetheless, Ello has stirred up a lot of buzz thanks to Facebook’s recent actions of shutting down profiles with stage names – “not real people”. Therefore, the LBGT community headed towards Ello, where they are able to use a made up name and not have to reveal their true identity. Vox, reported that last week 31,000 people were joining every hour. This sounds impressive, however, when you’re up against a giant like Facebook, who has over 1.23 billion users, it really means nothing.

“Even at a constant rate of 31,000 people per hour joining Ello, it would take nearly 1600 days or 4.38 years for Ello to reach the numbers Facebook deals with daily” – Al.com

Is Ello a competitor, or is it just fad that will fade once everyone has tried it? I think it’s a fad, and just like a lot of other fads, it’ll get ditched once people get bored. But if people don’t get bored, I think that users will get annoyed for having to pay for forming groups, events, social media plug-ins. After all, we use social media to share videos, pictures, thoughts, etc. Therefore, Facebook, unlike Ello, offers all of these features free of charge, with the minor inconvenience of advertisements, and the obvious “cost” of forfeiting your personal data and privacy.