'Anti-Facebook' social network gets fresh funding

No thanks. Facetime and Skype allow me to talk live with real friends and family, not bots.

talk live with real friends and family, not bots

What do bots have to do with anything? The article is about Ello: a social network site that is supposed to be somewhat similar to Facebook, yet without the ads and privacy violations. Nowhere is there any mention of any "bots", nor anything that should lead anyone to even thinking about those. This quote seems to be the most important part:

"Ello recently opened its doors on an invitation-only basis."

So anyone you would connect with on Ello, are the people that you have invited or else have invited you. In other words, they are people that you know. Bots won't be an issue here. They shouldn't even be an issue on Facebook, unless you have a habit of accepting friend requests for the sake of having a high friend count. In which case, you're asking to be surrounded by bots. Skype and Facetime are all well and good, if the people you're talking to have access to them and the time to use them as well. When time is short however, social networks and emails are the preferred alternatives.

I can see nothing particularly problematic with Ello, though I wonder if it can remain a viable option without ads. The article speaks of special features for premium membership. I wonder what that could entail? What could an ad-free social networking platform offer that would entice people to part with their money?

Ah, it must be nice to receive millions of dollars without any proven income or profits for that matter.

Nice work if you can get it, I suppose.

Ah, it must be nice to receive millions of dollars without any proven income or profits for that matter.

That's how venture capitalism works. The person/company receiving the money has to show a business plan, and often have a product as well, that inspires the confidence in the investors that the venture can make money. The investment is a gamble on the part of the investors, but the anticipated profits are high enough to make them willing to take the risk. So Ello, while having no profits, must have had a pretty decent business plan to have inspired the investment that they have received.

Ah, it must be nice to receive millions of dollars without any proven income or profits for that matter.

I remember people saying the same thing about Amazon. It traded up to $107 per share in 1999, after five years without one cent in earned profit.

I am sure there is plan for Ello to monetise itself without selling ads or personal info. Back when Facebook went public, it turned out that a lot of it's revenue came not from ads, but from it's games division, Zynga. I dislike Facebook on principle, I hope Ello is what they purport it to be.

I've obviously no idea what Ello will or won't become, but when I was in college and Facebook new it was also by invitation only. At the beginning it was very similar to this and promised more or less what this is promising, without the emphasis about online privacy because that wasn't really thought about (it was kinda assumed we'd have it I guess).

Anyway, I would be interested to see how this company plans to stay in business or what their business model is to generate revenue (it is a for-profit, after all)

If Facebook dies, I ain't starting a new site. I'll stay on FB until the end.

Still waiting for my invite. I will support it assuming there's something like company/brand pages.

Quite easy to see that Ello could become a site that charges $20 a year for their service. Guarantee no privacy intrusions nor ads and you have yourself a business plan.

If Ello can execute (and the extra funding makes that a lot more possible), I would think that there are plenty of people who want out of FB. Wasn't there a headline of 30,000 people an hour trying to sign up?