The birth of anti-Facebook social networking Ello

Absrtact: This article, compiled from Wired magazine, reviews the birth of the anti-Facebook social networking Ello, and introduces the artist's temperament but is a geek in the life of Paul Budnitz. Today, entrepreneurship has some unwritten rules.

This article, compiled from Wired magazine, reviews the birth of the anti-Facebook social networking Ello, and introduces the artist's temperament but is a geek's life in Paul Budnitz.

Today, entrepreneurship has some unwritten rules. For example, age should not be more than 30 years old, preferably a dropout. The company has to be in Silicon Valley or at least nearby. The market, already dominated by 1 billion of users, is best not to touch it. The most important thing is never to write a manifesto.

But Ello founder and CEO Paul Budnitz seems to have broken all these rules. He has finished Yale, he is 47 years old, his company is located in Vermont, far away from Silicon Valley, he wants to enter a market-facebook control social network that other people don't dare to think. As Facebook's advertising revenue has been surging, he has made a clear-cut statement against Facebook: simple, beautiful, ad-free. In just a few months, Ello has transformed from dozens of artists ' online clubs into a powerful viral phenomenon, and more than 1 million people are now waiting to be invited to join the beta version of Facebook's ad-free alternative, although it has not moved apps, only the web version.

The media's attitude to the explosive growth of Ello is complex. Some express surprise, some express irony. Some people think it is doomed to failure but will never give up the construction efforts of Utopia, because the similar efforts have been tried before, but ultimately failed.

But Budnitz has become accustomed to skepticism because it is the same attitude towards all the things that we have done before. He used to be a well-designed titanium bike and was thought to be a hot-headed friend of the bicycle circle. Earlier, he had opened a toy company, all of which were a limited edition of his street artist friends, and were sold to adults. It was praised as a "great business plan", but it sounded more sarcastic.

But his toy company, Kidrobot, was successful. Its limited edition rabbit doll by Farrell Williams and other people's favor. But now he has won the attention of more tech writers.

Artists are just appearances, they're hackers.

He used to be more like a programmer than an artist or designer. As a professor and son of a social worker, Budnitz every night riding his 10-speed bike to the University of Berkeley's Lawrence Science Museum to toss the computer there. Then he decided to go to Yale to study physics. But after studying for a bachelor's degree, he began to buy a silk-screen shirt and then introduced retro clothes to China. He sold a Levis pair of jeans to a Japanese collector at a price of 35000 dollars for the circus walkers.

Budnitz says many of his businesses are actually just trying to supplement his "Crazy Art movie". But he is still a computer geek in his bones. When Wired magazine first reported him in 1996, he was impressed by the Black premier DVD video editing software for his 16-millimeter movie "93 million miles from the Sun". So it is not surprising that he has shifted his attention to the Internet.

When Budnitz first saw the ad on Tumblr, he knew that the net was very ill. He remembers the nasty feeling that the ad had left him when he was showing up on the page. It's a woman's panties ad for JC Penny. The internet seems to have become a huge billboard, and he feels that it is now on the internet in the era of online television, the game has become how long advertising can be put off the audience. Budnitz, who is extremely bored, thinks there should be a better way to do things.

So last year he and some designer friends decided to build their own social networks.

Good wine is not afraid of the alley deep

With the help of mode set, a consultancy in Denver, they developed a minimalist service with no ads, only black-and-white images. Then the service became a social network that Budnitz and his nearly hundred artists friends wanted to use. The service was completely private. But by the end of the year, thousands of friends from the group would also like to Ello.

So in order to allow services to be expanded, they raised 435,000 dollars from a VC in Vermont State. The goal is not to take over the world, but to continue to develop what he and everyone else wants. In other words, the service will remain insulated from advertising. For many people asking Ello to compete with Facebook from time to time, Budnitz that Facebook is not a social network at all, but an advertising platform, and Ello is the real social network. (Well, 10 years ago, Facebook was so self-considered)

Advertising may be detrimental to users. GitHub, the developer's social network, also thinks so. So there's no advertising on the GitHub, but they've also found their way to make money--and let big companies pay millions of of dollars for managed code. Ello must also find its own way to make money, and it thinks its income should come from the user itself.

A Simple Plan

Like GitHub, Evernote and other services, Ello also intends to take a free value-added business model. Although Ello is currently in beta, providing a very basic interface to most people, users will be able to use the extra functionality by paying. The commercial approach is a bit like an app store, where extra functionality can be sold for 1 or 2 dollars. Users can choose and change the Ello interface, everyone's Ello can be different.

Budnitz says minimalism is the site's goal. They uphold the philosophy of design Dieter Rams "Less, but better (pager but decoupled)". There are no nested menus on the Ello.

For now, Ello is still in its infancy, with many problems and perhaps a slight lack of functionality. The search is not doing well. But the company's desire to replace Faebook is clearly stronger. Last August, the site was just released when only 90 users-all friends of Budnitz. It was then run for nearly 1 years in a private state. However, by the Monday, the peak of Ello at the time of every hour to receive 50,000 membership applications. ' We do want to expand, but we don't want to expand so fast, ' said Budnitz.

Rather than Ello's fire because it's good, Facebook is doing too badly. A week ago, Facebook forced a real-name demand to trigger a rally for users of dancers who were registered as stage names. The Ello "You are not a product" manifesto, and the tolerance of pseudonyms makes it a warm welcome for Internet users. Budnitz thinks this may be because some people live in places where there may be danger, and that is why this huge exodus is brewing. Ello, of course, welcome them with open arms. This is not to say that the site can challenge Facebook, nor can it guarantee that Ello will become a money-making machine, but it clearly has found its way. Maybe you just do what you want, and then the rest of it comes along?