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Booting Up: Mark Zuckerberg, say Ello to my little friend [Boston Herald](Boston Herald (MA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Sept. 29--Goodbye, Facebook. Hello, Ello? A new, ad-free social network is threatening to steal Facebook's lunch money as the Silicon Valley behemoth continues to fall out of favor with young users and draw ire for its flagrant profiteering. "Already, I'm hearing that people like the platform," said Emerson College digital marketing professor David Gerzof Richard, president of BIGfish Communications. "It has an artistic feel that's appealing to people, whereas Facebook is seen as a coloring book where you have to stay between the lines." Ello, founded just six weeks ago by a group of programmers and designers including Paul Budnitz of Vermont, is currently in beta and access is by invitation only. It is reportedly receiving 35,000 requests for invites an hour. I received my invite over the weekend and set up a profile in just a few minutes. The network is refreshingly simple and has an edgy, almost industrial design that drives home the point that aesthetically and functionally, this is the anti-Facebook. Ello pledges to remain ad-free and notes on its site, "There are some Ello users who don't want to share any information, even anonymous information, about themselves with anybody. We're cool with that." Speaking of cool, Ello taps into the notion that Facebook isn't. And it couldn't come at a worse time for the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg, which has been roiled by a string of controversies this year. Facebook's own data showed it had 3 million fewer teens this year than in 2011. A few months later, the network was forced to issue an apology for surreptitiously enrolling users into a study by academic researchers who were allowed to manipulate users' timelines without their consent. Yet data-hungry Facebook is a powerful tool for advertisers, whether they're small or large businesses. The conversion rates and hyper-targeting available to marketers through Facebook are second to none. Being intensely advertiser-driven is a double-edged sword. Facebook's efforts to remove the profiles of those who fail to use their real name, for instance, has drawn backlash. Ello, on the other hand, has gone so far as to issue a "manifesto" proclaiming itself to be completely user-driven. Based on its claims, one has to wonder how it will monetize. "The challenge of something like this is scale," Gerzof Richard said. "As the network grows, there are bandwidth requirements, service requests, customer service needs -- and all this stuff that needs to be troubleshooted. That costs money." It's a tall order to replace a network that is a part of daily life for about one-third of the world's Internet users. To say Facebook has a critical mass is an understatement. But someone already considers Ello an enemy. Because just yesterday, Ello was targeted with a so-called Denial of Service attack. Malicious users tried to overload the site with traffic, causing it to temporarily crash. Ello defeated its first challenge, but bigger battles are ahead. ___ (c)2014 the Boston Herald Visit the Boston Herald at www.bostonherald.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |