Oct. 8, 2014

By Rumasa Noor

Social networking websites have become increasingly popular in the past few years. They have become a major medium of communication as more and more people are using them to connect with other people.

These sites have their benefits but they also have some drawbacks – the biggest one being the compromise on privacy.

Most networking sites make their money through advertisements, and they often sell their user’s personal information to third parties.

Recently, a new social networking website Ello has emerged that promises user privacy by being ad-free.

Ello first started off as a private website, but after getting a great deal of requests, the site creators decided to make it public, according to its official website.

Some are calling Ello to be anti-Facebook and it’s not just because of its no-ad policy.

In the light of the Facebook’s real-name-policy scandal, members of the LGBT community also have started embracing the request-only website, according to an article on cnnmoney.com.

The same article argues Ello might not have what it takes to beat Facebook, because the Ello founders plan on making profits through offering freemium models and having the users purchase its features “to customize their Ello experience.”

The article says a similar model was also used by another site names App.net. The site’s developer decided to shut it down after being unable to make enough profit to pay its developers.

The concept of Ello seems ideal for many users, but considering the failure of past websites with similar business models, it is hard to determine whether the site will be able to take off or not.

Ello has gotten a lot of attention in most major media outlets, and it also is seeing a sharp increase in user requests, which gives it a promising outlook. But only time will tell if it will be able to replace any major social networking sites, especially Facebook, and adjust its model to survive.