Remember Ello, the no-real-names-needed social network that lots of people in 2014 described as a Facebook killer? To judge by its traffic, probably not. Now Backchannel has the inside story of its rise and fall and rise again, and as it turns out, it inadvertently started with Sister Roma, the drag queen activist who led the charge against Facebook's real name policy:
Sister Roma had started a movement. As activists rallied around her, a question emerged: If Facebook was going to demand legal names from its LGBT users, how could those users remain loyal to the social network? That’s when Ello laid out the welcome mat.
Thing is, Ello was never intended to be a Facebook killer, and as Facebook rapidly worked with Roma to carve out a policy that allowed pseudonyms (including for avatars), Ello lost a key growth driver. But all is not lost:
[Ello co-founder Todd] Berger declined to disclose the number of active users on Ello today, but needless to say it’s exponentially smaller than that of Facebook. Yet today, Ello seems a lot like the site Berger, Budnitz and crew set out to build in the first place. Dubbed, “The Creators Network,” Ello is designed for artists, artisans, writers, and designers — creatives looking for a network to showcase, and in which to talk about, their work.
Which is great, though I kind of think Deviant Art already dominates that category in terms of traffic. (200 million+ monthly visits!)
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