As Ello targets Facebook, here's what you need to know

Social networks just aren’t fun anymore. So how do you build one that is?

That’s the founding principle of Ello, a new, completely ad-free social network that’s seen rapid growth in recent weeks.

“Making Ello ad-free was one of the early motivations,” Paul Budnitz, a Vermont-based designer and a founder of Ello, told Newsday by phone. “Facebook seemed to think I was a middle-aged woman, showing me ads for stockings and high-heeled shoes. We felt not just that the ads were ugly, they often insulted our intelligence.”

While Budnitz and six other friends — all designers or programmers — built Ello a year and a half ago, for much of the network’s life it was completely private. In its early form, Ello served just 100 users. Nine months ago, it opened to the public in a beta, invite-only form, very gradually building up momentum.

Then networks like Facebook started making headlines for playing with its users’ emotions and threatening to force users to use their real names (then backtracking) — coincidentally sparking rapid growth on Ello over the past six weeks.

“We’re seeing 45,000 new users per hour,” Budnitz said, although he declined to share the total number of users to date on Ello.

At the moment, Ello remains invite-only — curious users can request an invite at ello.co, or they can put out a call for an invite on other social networks. That would explain much of the Ello chatter on Facebook and Twitter that may have popped up on your feeds in recent weeks.

The site itself is designed around a minimalist, black-and-white color scheme. It is very bare-bones — something like a very blank cross between Twitter and Tumblr. Users receive two feeds, one called “Friends” (presumably, for your Ello contacts whom you consider actual friends), and another called “Noise” (for those more distant Ello contacts, including brands and retailers).

Still in beta testing, the site is buggy. For days, the search function worked poorly. There’s still no way to block abusive users. There’s no mobile app. Sometimes, you click, and nothing happens. Even tech-savvy users find themselves stumbling around the site.

“We’re still in beta, and we’re still developing it,” Budnitz said by way of explanation. “We’re being very open about that.”

While many users report their feeds so far mostly consist of people wondering aloud what Ello is, others have embraced its lack of constraints — no character limit for posts, large display for photos, and so on.

Among Budnitz’s favorite users is @duaneking, who posts gorgeous images of spacemen at work.

“When you take ads out, all these other great things happen,” Budnitz explained. “There’s no reason to collect data on your users when you don’t have ads. Facebook makes more money if they know exactly who you are and what you like.”

As Facebook once did, Ello currently displays users’ posts in completely chronological order. (Facebook, on the other hand, now relies on a mysterious algorithm, based on whether a user has paid to promote their post or whether it naturally attracts likes, comments or shares.)

“We’ll never put anything in there that you don’t want,” Budnitz promised.

So how do they plan on making money?

“Ello is a business,” he said. Recently, the network took a minority amount of funding from a Vermont-based venture capital firm called FreshTracks Capital.

Budnitz explained that Ello’s plan is to create features that users can buy — similar to how iPhone users can buy apps to customize their phones.

The most-requested feature, Budnitz said, is to be able to manage two Ello feeds — one for personal, and one for business — from a single login. The plan is to charge a dollar or two for that, and other features, such as changing how posts are sorted. So far, users have submitted suggestions via Ello’s support email address or by simply posting their thoughts on Ello itself.

In its current form, Ello is not going to be a “Facebook killer” — even though some media seem to think it will be. For all anyone knows, it could be a simple flash in the social media pan.

Simply put, it is not for everyone — and it doesn’t want to be. (Visitors to ello.co who read the founders’ “manifesto” can click “I agree” or “I disagree” — the latter will redirect them to Facebook.)

The site still has a long way to go, with no concrete date set yet for a fully public launch. But at the very least, it’s cool knowing that for users who are fed up — with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or any other existing network — there’s an alternative. And it’s growing fast.