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Vermont is known for its green pastures, farmsteads and roads free of billboards. The founders of the new social network Ello live in the state, and they want to bring Vermont-like serenity to the Internet.

"We set out to prove that a social network will survive and thrive that doesn't have a business model of selling ads to its users," says CEO and co-founder Paul Budnitz.

Budnitz owns a bicycle company in Vermont and also founded Kidrobot, which makes high-end art toys. He says Ello's creators initially launched the site for their circle of friends. They wanted a clean online space to exchange large images and long-form text.


The site has been growing steadily for about a year, he says, but that changed last week, when 

 mentioned Ello as an alternative and set off a stampede of interest.



"We're getting about 40,000 signups and requests an hour ... so it's a lot," Budnitz says.

You need an invitation from a friend to use Ello, and that amps up the allure. Many Ello users, like 24-year-old Charity Walden, say they joined simply out of curiosity.

"I use Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat," Walden says, and now Ello rounds out that group. "I think it's really cool to be there at the beginning and see how it's developed."

The spike of interest in a new social network also points to intensifying concerns over issues like data mining, online bullying and the protection of privacy. Users can't make their Ello accounts private, but the founders say that's coming soon. And Ello's stated mission is to be profitable without selling user data — a claim that attracts scrutiny. Once it was revealed that Ello received venture capital money in January, the critics went to town.


Aral Balkan is one of them. He's a privacy advocate who's building an independent operating system. Balkan says he 

 a VC-backed social network that will face pressure to balloon in size and value.


"If you take venture capital at the very beginning when you went to investors to ask for money you had to present your exit plan, because that's when the investors make their money back," Balkan says. "Even before you built the thing, you're selling the people that you hope to get to use it."

After just a few days, Ello user Jimmy Chan is also losing interest in the site, but for a different reason. He says he's not getting much out of it.

"Some of my friends are jumping in to say, 'You're all still here?' as if it was Monday morning, and people are still in their living room from a Sunday night party," he says. Chan says Ello probably won't be fun for him until it picks up traction with more friends and offers different features.

But the site is being tweaked and reworked in full view of a rapt online audience, and the founders are responding to complaints and requests as the site takes shape. Budnitz, Ello's co-founder, has a relatively calm attitude about the critiques. "I'm in Vermont, I'm not in Silicon Valley," he says.

Budnitz is confident that Ello can make money through a "freemium" model. Users would pay for extra features like the ability to access multiple accounts with a single login. He maintains that the founders don't feel undue pressure to compromise their ideals, and says they're content to stay small, and modestly profitable, in a Vermont kind of way.

Science

Nishat Kurwa

Author

Interest in a new social network points to intensifying concerns over issues like data mining, online bullying and privacy protection.

'Ello' aims for a return to ad-free social networking

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