Is Ello the End of Social Media as We Know Them?

What Start-Ups and SME’s can learn from this new social network?

What’s all the buzz about Ello?  Is this the anti-Facebook?

It is a new social network that is growing very fast (30,000 new users per hour) with different values.  Ello has a strong ideology that is expressed through their manifesto that follows:

“Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity, and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.

We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.

You are not a product.”

The Ello claims that is a simple and ad-free social network. It is created by a small group of artists and designers.

All right so far. Many new social networks tried to win Facebook and to change the existing map of social media, but without success. Facebook has invested huge amounts of dollars in order to reach this point.

What is new here is the trend which clearly demonstrates that there are a lot of people who want a new social network free of advertising and exploitation of their personal data. 

What Start-Ups and SME’s can learn from this new social network? 

They can learn that probably the era of unlimited commercialization of social media has reached a turning point.

Businesses must start using the social media in such a way that customers will feel not like the products themselves but like unique persons with specific values.  In other words, businesses must start using social media in order to return value to their customers. This value can be created when the communication process and all the relevant tactics are based on ethical motives and not based just on business financial goals.

A good example would be, to inform and solve problems, to gather information in order to make better products and to offer better services, to answer questions, to interact with local communities by helping them, etc.

I know that many of you will say that this is already happening, but probably without ethical concerns and at least not by the majority of businesses. That is why we witness this trend of people searching for other networks to use.

Ello realized that. By using this clever differentiation strategy, it has become very popular even before it starts operating normally (it is still in beta form).

We do not know yet what will be the story of Ello. It is very probable to change this strategy in the future. For the time being, it claims that it will earn money through the offer of some kind of special applications. We will all see the outcome.

The important issue for businesses is to observe this trend for “ethical” social media and to respond accordingly.

So, is Ello the end of social media as we know them?

Let’s see what Ello will bring to the table and how the other social networks will react if it becomes very successful. Then we will know for sure!

What do you believe that will happen?