One of the interesting things about social network is that it comes in waves. There is a little comment about it but it fades quickly. And then another and another. As it gets more popular, people start to talk about it heavily.
And, with today's programs, you start getting the “beta invites” and then people begging for one. Next thing you know, everyone has one and the invites are just for show and then… nothing.
At the moment, Ello is currently going through that life cycle. It is a new social networking that claims to be simple and beautiful. It is, for the most part, at least in my impression. But, it is also early software and it is missing a lot of features that most other social networking needs.
Now, that happens with everything. Google+ was pretty bare bones when first came out and so was Facebook, not that anyone remembers that.
Ello
I got a chance to see Ello for myself.
What I find interesting with Ello is how they plan on making money if they aren't advertising. Because it is run by a for-profit company, someone has to pay the bills. They aren't say (which is annoying in itself) but rumors are they will be charging for extra features such as changing the appearance or exporting data.
One thing is that Ello is handle-friendly. So people like me, who don't want our meat bodies to be associated with their online personas, can find a home there. There is no Real Names policy and it appears that there won't be. And it will be porn-friendly, which is definitely up my boat.
Diaspora
That said, I wanted to bring up Diaspora. I'm actually pretty firmly in this camp for my mainstream byline but only recently jumped on the boat with t'Sade. Like Ello, there isn't as many people out there, but Diaspora isn't beta. It's been in active use for years, has a pretty large community of developers improving it and doing so publically, and is run by a not-for-profit organization.
Diaspora is also handle-friendly, has support for NSFW and porn, and has no advertising. It also has working #hashtag support and @mentions.
The biggest thing is the federated nature of it. For the most part, there is too much technical “it's amazing” that it becomes just noise to non-programmers. In simple terms, Diaspora is spread out across multiple computers and owners (called pod admins). No one single organization controls it and most admins run a “pod” because they want to. The bigger ones ask for donations to keep running, but nothing in there injects advertising directly. If a pod start to do that, you just pack up your stuff and move to a new pod. If someone starts to spam you, you just remove them.
It is also designed to move. So you can easily export your account and delete it from any pod. Exporting is built in from the beginning, so you can keep your data.
Circles, Aspects, and Lists
Ello's following consists of adding people to a friend list or a noise list. The noise is the list where you want to pay attention, but not see it on your home page.
Diaspora has aspects (basically Google+'s circles). You can add someone to one more of these circles. For example, I have a “Writers” and a “Artist” aspect. I also have “Personal”, though Fluffy doesn't go on that often.
When you make a Diaspora post, you choose either Public (everyone) or one or more aspects. Only the people who you've added to that aspect will see it. I usually use Public in all of my posts lately, but occasionally there are ones that have more personally identifying posts.
Likewise, on Diaspora, you can choose which aspects are on your home page. I have a couple noise-like categories which are there to show support but otherwise I ignore them entirely.
Formatting
Both networks support Markdown for formatting. The default font is pretty bland in both cases, but I suspect Ello is going to charge for different fonts in the future. For Diaspora, there really isn't a choice of changing fonts but I'm hoping to see that in the future.
Most of this is fine since I really only use Markdown, but others might feel others.
Choices
Everyone has a choice to use their network. For me, Ello is the current pretty toy and I see people jumping on it to try it out. Though, I'd love it if erotic writers would consider Diaspora also. You don't need an invite and you can jump right in.
Regardless, feel free to add me on either network and just say hi!