Ello: how much would you pay for real privacy and no advertising?

Ello is a social network that might best be described as enigmatic. We first heard about it toward the end of October, although it had been in test mode since March. It’s been defined as the antithesis of Facebook, with a manifesto affirming that users are not products to be sold to advertisers, while its invitation to sign up was at times prompting more than 27,000 requests an hour to join.

It was set up with a $450,000 investment, which led some analysts to say that its promises were false, because once you sell your business to an investor, you’re tied in to the moment when he or she wants out and sells you so they can do business as they see fit. But Ello said that despite the presence of third party investors, it was free to do do as it pleased, which it demonstrated by becoming a public benefit corporation (PBC), which effectively guarantees that no matter who ends up owning it in the future, it will never have advertising or sell its users’ data.

It’s still too soon to assess Ello’s success. We’ve seen these kinds of promising launches in the past, that all too often come to nothing, victims of the so-called network effect. Speculating on whether Ello will work out or not is akin to staring into a crystal ball. That said, it represents an interesting trend, and its decision to become a PBC has not deterred investors, who have now put more than $5.5 million on the table.

For example, what is Ello’s business model? While the founders talk about freemium models based on users paying for certain functions, we might also ask if those users are prepared to pay for options that are available for free on other social networks. Just how much are we prepared to pay for our privacy? Is the advertising on other social networks so bothersome that we’re prepared to go elsewhere? And is this a question that concerns everybody to the same degree, or is this something that only matters to young people, which would explain why they are heading en masse to networks like Instagram or Snapchat?

The absence of a business model has not proved a problem for many successful companies in the past: Google, Twitter, and many others began without a clear business model: the first planned to live off its search engine (and didn’t “find” contextual advertising until it stole the idea from GoTo.com, which meant it had to negotiate a perpetual license with the former owner, Yahoo!), the latter admitted from the start it had no business model and that it would wait until one presented itself.

Over time, things have gone further: Ello not only doesn’t have a business model as such; it has closed the door to certain possibilities. That said, if you are able to build something that a sufficiently large number of users appreciate enough, your business will be viable. With this in mind, I look up to my navigator tool bar and scrutinize the tabs I have open in search of examples of this. I am a methodical person, and tend to have the same tabs open in the main window of my navigator:

• Feedly: To read the news, a service I pay a premium subscription for.
• StatCounter: For my page’s statistics. I also pay a premium subscription to increase the length of the log. I do this despite also using Google Analytics, which is now the benchmark, partly because of custom and in part to maintain a register of my visits from before Analytics existed.
• Google Analytics: It’s free and offers its premium model at prices clearly aimed at the corporate world, which I could not afford to pay.
• WordPress: I don’t pay for WordPress, but instead for features such as its anti-spam filter, or for questions related to the domains I use, etc.
• Gmail and Google Calendar: I don’t pay directly for them, although I have thought about it, especially in relation to other related tools, such as Google Docs. I do pay for extra storage space.
• Facebook: I don’t pay. Would I? I don’t honestly know.
• Google+: I don’t pay, and if I did, it would be for accessory features such as the indispensable hangouts.
• Twitter: I don’t pay. Would I? It would depend on the price; if it were reasonable, no problem.

An exercise, which beyond my willingness to pay and to what extent I am representative of the average user, is still interesting: it would seem that there is a tendency to pay for services we value. Would I pay for a social network free of advertising, and where my privacy was guaranteed, and where I felt free to share the content I wanted, without some interfering authority telling me that there is a nipple on view, or asking me to confirm my name. I think I would. What’s more, I think I would prefer this. I navigate sites like Facebook not only with my adblocker on, but also using DoNotTrackMe, which does its best to protect my privacy as best it can – yes, I know that “as best it can” doesn’t mean I am completely protected, but it shows real interest in doing so.

I have no idea how things will work out for Ello. But I increasingly understand that new trends are emerging in the way the web is used, and that it’s taking some players time to get their heads round it.

(En español, aquí)