Ello will now let you share music and video; but let's face it, nobody cares

Ello, the ad-free network that went viral last year as the Facebook-killer,  has launched the ability to share music and video clips in its feed, reports TechCrunch.  Last September, the world had gone crazy over Ello , which was an invite-only social network. It was kind of funny to watch people post requests for Ello invite on Facebook. Ah, the irony. Anyway, Ello’s popularity had soared because Facebook wasn’t insisting that everybody use their real name (something that Google+ tried to shove down everyone’s throat as well) and this offended many members of the transgender and gay community in the US, who it seems were leaving Facebook in droves to get onto Ello. Except that hype didn’t take long to puncture. As this Guardian post shows, by October 2014, Ello was already off the minds of the public as search trends for the site had started dropping. Now it’s not clear how many users Ello still has, but it’s evident that the buzz helped and the site is well alive, for now. In October, Ello managed to get $5.5 million in funding as well. But it wouldn’t be surprising if Ello hasn’t grown much because let’s face it, we’ve hardly heard anything since the September madness. Oh and they have a Facebook page now, a sure sign that they aren’t going to be Facebook-killers. Also based on my own Ello page, I can see that the two people who joined it and were on my Feed haven’t posted for the past four months. It’s evident that once the hype died, people left as well. Then of course there’s the fact that Ello wants to remain ad-free, which sounds great in theory, except investors will want returns and unless they increase user engagement on the site, convincing future investors will be hard. The truth is beating Facebook isn’t an easy task and no video or music player is going to change that. Ello is essentially offering the same thing as Facebook and as the TechCrunch piece points out the only social networks that succeeded all offer something different from Facebook. Plus it helps that Facebook now has 1.35 billion users, owns WhatsApp and Instagram and is basically omnipresent in our lives in every form. So while it’s great that everyone wanted a network that wouldn’t use ads, the truth is nobody was happy to leave the one that has ads. Users might cry hoarse about Facebook’s privacy policy, but as the numbers show, no one is switching over to any other social network in droves, anytime soon.