Ello: The Little SNS That Could (and can)

The Little SNS That Could (and can)“man wearing black and white purge mask and white crew-neck sweatshirt while kneeling left knee” by sebastiaan stam on UnsplashThe Social Networking SystemFlash of ViewsImagine starting out with a measly 40 views on your latest sns site (Social Networking System) and thinking, “Well, this blows.” But then, you check back a few days later and you’ve gotten nearly 500. And it doesn’t end there. Imagine you spend the rest of the day gleefully refreshing the page every few hours only to see hundreds of more views pile on. At last count, I was at 1500. Correction, I just hit 1600 views as I write this. I’ve also got 21 comments and 22 followers so far.

That is pretty much what has been happening to me on Ello over the last three days. Just so you get a better idea of what that means, I usually average about 2000–4000 views on Medium a month. Unless you are already a Medium demigod with tens of thousands of followers those numbers should be pretty astounding.

“yellow inflatable smiling emoji balloon in focus photography” by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash

I’m not exactly new to Ello though. I set up an account over a year ago, sniffed around a bit, couldn’t really figure out how to get my writing noticed on it, and gave up. At that time it seemed to me that Ello was more geared towards visual artists rather than writers.

Fast forward to about a week ago when I read this excellent article.

The Medium Vs. Ello Experiment

After reading about Mateja Klaric’ experience on Ello I decided to give it another try. And for the reasons I mentioned above I’m very glad I did. I’m no stranger to trying out new sns.

Can You Word Your Way to Wealth on Medium, Steemit, or Yours? Maybe.

Those Other SNS(s? WTH is the plural form or sns anyway?)

In fact, I was an earlier believer in that old pay for posting sns and brief-lived cyber-refuge for all the crazies that had already gotten booted off all the mainstream sns, tsu.co. While tsu was fun for a while I don’t think the founders ever really had a good plan set up to actually pay those of us that were hoping to earn some money there. About six months ago I also joined Steemit and Yours and I’m still a member of both, but views, likes, and gaining followers has been pretty dismal. I rarely post or spend any time on either of them now.

“woman sitting on a fire hydrant” by Joshua Rawson-Harris on Unsplash

The Downsides

Getting a big stinking eye full of hardcore porn:

I don’t know if it’s because Ello is run by censorship hating anarchist or just because they don’t have the cash to hire mods, but a fairly innocuous search for stand up comedy had me quickly staring at several hardcore porn gifs that were being used by what seemed to be an erotica short story writer. So, if you do a search steel yourself for what you might see.

Spartan Look and Feel:

As much as I bitch and complain about Medium it does have some very cool features and it is very easy to use. Having had blogs on Wordpress, Blogger, and a website on Wix, I have to say for an internet dunce like myself Medium is pretty damn slick. Ello kind of looks like a mentally challenged version of Twitter in comparison. You can upload pics, type or paste in text, and added a bolded heading, but that’s about it as far as I have seen. I think video can be added to posts as well, but I haven’t tried it yet.

Monetizable?

There is a little tab at the bottom of each post. No idea yet how it works. I suspect it is probably geared towards those selling art, fashion goods, and not writing. I could be wrong though. I haven’t been active on Ello long enough yet to ask any of the other writers there if they sell their work or not.

Conclusion

I’m not quite ready to completely jump ship yet, but I think I’m going to be spending more time crossing posting to Ello for sure. With my views hitting 1.7k as I finish this little article I have to think, Why wouldn’t you?

If you enjoyed this please check some of my other stuff here.

Waiting is Part of PublishingThe Ongoing Battle to Publish Helping each other write better.

Ello: The Little SNS That Could (and can) was originally published in The Writing Cooperative on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.