Facebook is going to face tough competition in the near future with Ello launching its app on iOS. The social network which caused a hype when it was launched nine months ago due to its ad-free business model and had partially lost its glory thereafter, has made a come-back with an iOS app.
The co-founder and CEO of the company Paul Bunditz said that Ello had to be feature-complete before launching it as an application on the mobile. The site made headlines after the ‘drag queens’ episode which caused a tussle between the drag queens community and Facebook and Ello proved to be a good alternative to the social network giant.
According to Paul, the tentative launch date of the app on Android and Windows Phone is late summer or early fall. The small team of Ello is working extremely hard on the app and development for Android is on the verge of completion while the one for Windows Phone is under progress.
The iOS app is available on the iTunes app store requiring iOS 8 or a later version and is going to be absolutely free for users. Along with social networking services, Ello will also serve as an ecommerce and video streaming platform which will go live later next year. The ecommerce platform will tie up with payment gateways like PayPal and Ello will earn some commission from the sales like eBay does.
Features meant to be on a social networking site’s web version are included in the Ello app including push notifications, full search, finding friends, private messages, sharing video and audio content from sites like YouTube, SoundCloud, Uscreen, Bandcamp on Vine and reposting other people’s posts. It doesn’t censor any posts and maintains users’ full ownership of the text and photos. One feature which is unique in Ello and is a bonus for coders and developers s that they can also enable sharing codes from Codepen. Sharing from Ello to other platforms like Instagram, Twitter etc. is also possible. Users can now join without any invite.
Ello will introduce the private and group messaging features on its web platform very soon. In addition to this, the company will soon make use of hashtags on the app as well as the web. The app on the phone will import all contacts and find the friends already using the service. This comes with the assurance that the data will be not be used by Ello or a third party thus ensuring security.
Along with this, the V2 web apps and Ello beta are also getting a few updates. The desktop version upgraded itself with features like full search, real-time alerts, private messaging, private groups, and “Loves” which aggregates marked posts into a separate stream, allowing users to save and collect content.
The Facebook alternative flaunts its non-data collection policy and believes in no advertisements or e-mail collection while connecting with people on the Internet. Contrary to Facebook policies, Ello will not charge users to make their posts reach more people.
The site has monetization plans by the end of the year by introducing premium features for users to purchase later which won’t be obligatory. Apart from this, the company has gathered $5.5m by means of funding. It already has a user strength of more than 1,000,000. Bunditz plans to increase the active users by launching the app and enable them to sell stuff right in their feed.
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The site wasn’t spared by hackers who blocked users out of the site for 45 minutes in September by launching a distributed Denial of service attack on the site.
By means of describing the social network, Paul said “You will realize once you start using Ello, especially the app, how much interference there’s been on social media. Once you take that interference out, you just get a wonderful, uninterrupted experience.”
