Ello is the hot new “ad free and always will be” social network that all the cool kids are clamoring to get on. Although it’s been around for a few months, it’s existence went viral during the final weeks of September 2014. On all other social networks a reader couldn’t go far before seeing a post from someone asking for one of the precious but scarce invite codes.
This post will serve as a frequently-updated guide to the features of Ello and how to use them. You can download the latest version in PDF form here (coming soon).
Ello was created by a group of artists and designers from the Berger & Föhr Studios who were fed up with social networks brimming with ads and selling their users’ data to other advertisers. They believed that others were ready for something different too, and so they made Ello.
Ello isn’t just an attempt to break with the alleged over-commercialization of social networks, it’s also a revolt against their often too-cluttered design. Ello is as simple and clean as Craigslist, but with slightly hipsterish twists (clean, sparce layout; monospaced typewriter fonts; a logo that mocks the ubiquitous, ad agency created smiley-face).
As simple as Ello’s design is, it’s very minimalism can make it daunting to new users. Some of its features work very differently from other social networks. And many features social media users now expect as “standard” are still on the drawing board. (This guide, and it’s PDF downloadable version, will be updated as new features or other changes are introduced.)
We hope that this guide will help you get more productive and enjoyable use out of Ello! (Note: This guide currently covers only the desktop version of Ello.)
This document is copyright ©2014 Stone Temple Consulting. You may copy and distribute the downloadable version of this guide, but must include its entire contents unaltered, and you may not charge for the guide nor use it as part of any sales or promotions without explicit written permission from Stone Temple Consulting. This guide may not be reproduced on the web without permission.
Table of Contents
1. Overview of Ello
2. Creating an Ello Account and Profile</p>
Signing up
Creating a Profile & Editing Settings
Adding a Header Image
3. The Ello Home Page
The Ello Control Panel
Default Home Page View
Viewing Profiles and Posts of Users
4. Following Users
Understanding Friends and Noise
How to Follow Another User
5. Finding Users
Discover Page
Discovering Users Via Other Users
6. Posting and Commenting
Creating a New Post
Basic Text Formatting
Creating a Link
Publishing a Post
Editing, Deleting, or Linking a Published Post
Commenting on Posts
Responding to an Individual Comment
Editing, Deleting or Linking to a Comment
Comment Notifications in the Home Stream
Mentioning Other Users
7. Ello Best Practices: How to Become a Super User
Dont Cross the Streams (But Do Switch Them!)
Resharing
Engaging
8. Extras: Text Formatting, Emojis and Ello Services
Formatting Text
Emojis
Reporting Bugs and General Feedback
Reporting Abuse, Fake Profiles, and Spam
Is Ello Down?
1. Overview of Ello
Here are some basic distinctives of Ello:
No advertising, and the owners pledge that your account data will never be made available to third parties for advertising or commercial purposes.
Following and being followed are asymmetrical. That is, you can follow any user without having to be followed back, and anyone can follow you. This makes Ello more similar to Twitter and Google+ than Facebook.
Everything you post or comment is public. That is, it can not only be viewed by other Ello users, but by anyone who has a link to the page.
You place accounts that you follow into one of two groups: Friends or Noise.
You only see content in either of your feeds from accounts that you follow.
Posts can be just text, just images, or a combination. Each text box or image within a post can be dragged and dropped to change the original order.
Each of those features will be covered in more detail in the sections below.
2. Creating an Ello Account and Profile
At present, Ello accounts can be obtained only through invites extended either from the network itself of from other users (who each get a limited number to give out). Those who don’t know anyone offering invites can be put on a waiting list for Ello-extended invites by entering their email addresses in the form on the home page.
Signing Up for Ello
Once you have an invite code, go to https://ello.co/join to create your account.
Your invitation code will be pre-filled. If not, paste it in.
Choose a username. If a green dot appears to the right in that window, the name you have chosen is still available.
Finally create a password (8 character minimum) and click “Create Account.”
Creating a Profile and Editing Ello Settings
Once you’ve completed the signup process, you’ll find yourself on the Ello home page.
You’ll be viewing the @ello account, the official “home” account of Ello. Like Tom of MySpace fame, @ello automatically follows every user, so @ello is your first follower. I’ll cover the various elements of the home page later, but for now you’ll want to click the gear icon at the top of the left column to go to Settings.
Here is what the Settings page looks like:
Your username, email, and password will be already filled in since you created those during account setup. At this point you’ll want to add or adjust four other elements:
Profile photo: Drag and drop an image into the circle at upper left. Ideal size is 340 x 340. Make sure the part you want visible is in the center of your image, as it will be cropped down to a circle.
Name: This is the name which will be displayed underneath your username in your profile. If you do not want any name displayed, leave this blank.
Bio: Create a brief description to appear at the top of your profile.
Links: Add any links to other places people can find you or your content.
After making any changes to your profile, you will be asked to reenter your password in order to save the changes. View your profile by clicking the link at the bottom of the setup form.
Additional Settings
If you scroll down the Settings page you will see toggle switches to set various options for your account:
These options are divided into three sections. The grey part of each Yes/No toggle indicates the active choice. To change the option, click on either Yes or No.
Settings
Public Profile: A Yes setting means that anyone can view your profile online, even if they aren not logged in to Ello. No means only logged in users can view your profile.
Comments: Yes means any other user can leave a comment on your posts. No blocks comments for all your posts.
Analytics: Yes gives permission for Ello to collect anonymous data about your activities on Ello to help them assess how well the service is running and detect problems. No one at Ello can connect this data with your specific account. A No choice prevents Ello from collecting this data.
Notifications
Comments: Yes means you will receive an email anytime a new comment is added to one of your posts.
Mentions: Yes means you will be notified by email when another user mentions you in a post. (See below for how to “mention” a user.)
New Followers: Yes means you will be notified by email when other users follow you.
These notifications also appear in your Friends stream, but they move down over time as newer posts, comments, etc. come in at the top.
Account Deletion
Clicking the Delete button will terminate your account, and all your personal information, posts, and comments will be removed. Once deleted, your account cannot be restored.
Adding a Header Image
From the settings page you can also add a large banner image that will show above your profile when people scroll upward while viewing it.
To add a header image, scroll to the top of the Settings page until the “Change your header image” legend appears in the large grey space (or the existing image). Drag and drop an image into that space. (Note: ideal image dimensions are 1800 x 1300).
3. The Ello Home Page
Let’s take a tour of the Ello home page.
The Ello Control Panel
When in default view, the Ello control panel is always at the upper left of your screen:
Let’s walk through the elements of the Control Panel.
Home Button: Clicking the Ello logo (black circle with a white “smile”) on the control panel will always bring you back to the home page, and a fresh Omni Box for posting (more on that below).
Discover: The first of the three small icons from left-to-right, which looks like the silhouette of a person with a + sign takes you to the Discover page. More on that below.
Invites: The circle with a plus sign in it takes you to your Invitations page, where you can send Ello account invitations to friends (if you currently have any available).
Settings: The gear icon takes you to your Settings page (see above).
Sidebar Slider: the icon made of three parallel horizontal lines, when clicked on, hides the left sidebar, which allows the entire window width for displaying posts and comments. Clicking this again restores the default view.
Friends and Noise: These buttons toggle the right panel between views of the feeds for the two groups in which you place users you follow. It also changes the display of user thumbnails in the left panel to show users you have in the active group. More on that below.
The Default Home Page View
The default Home Page view in the desktop version of Ello has two panels.
The left panel displays the Control Panel and thumbnails of the profile images of users you follow in the current right panel view (Friends or Noise).
The right panel displays a timeline of posts and comments from users in the currently selected group (Friends or Noise).
Here is how that appears for a typical active user. First, with Friends selected:
And with Noise selected:
Notice that in Friends view, posts and comments are fully expanded and take up the entire width of the right panel, whereas in the Noise view, posts are shown as thumbnails with only an excerpt of any text, and in columns. (Pro Tip: Shift-5 will toggle the Noise view to expand all posts and display them full width, similar to the Friends View.
Viewing Profiles and Posts of Other Users
The simplest way to view the profile and posts of an account you follow is to go to the group that contains that user (Friends or Noise, using the selector buttons on the Control Panel), and find their avatar in the left panel. Clicking on the avatar (thumbnail profile image) loads that user’s profile and timeline of posts in the right panel.
You can also load the profile and post timeline of any user by clicking on their avatar or @name anywhere on Ello, or by entering http://ello.co/xxx in your browser’s URL bar, where xxx=the username.
4. Following Users (Friends and Noise)
Understanding Friends and Noise
Before we talk about how to add a user, it is important to understand that in Ello you place every account you follow into one of two groups: either Friends or Noise. Noise may have been an unfortunate name choice, since it implies “low value” or even “worth ignoring.” We need to get past that, since these are all people you chose to follow!
Rather the two groups are Ello’s simple way of letting you sort out a common problem in social networks: signal vs noise. In any group of accounts you follow on a network, there are bound to be some that have more importance of value to you. For those accounts you typically want to see more of their posts and engage more with them. All of your other followers are people or brands you’re content to occasionally browse, but you don’t care if you see everything from them.
Most other social networks seek to solve this problem by use of algorithms that try to automatically figure out what for you will be “signal” and what will be “noise” and show you more of the former and less of the latter. Ello leaves that choice entirely up to you.
So most users will want to put relatively fewer accounts they follow in Friends and many more in Noise. Some users start out adding everyone to Friends, and then over time decide who should be moved to Noise as they observe the behavior of the users.
How to Follow Another User
To follow a user you must view their profile. You can view their profile by clicking on their avatar anywhere on Ello, clicking on any @mention of their user name, or by entering http://ello.co/xxx in your browser’s URL bar, where xxx=the username.
Once you are viewing the user’s profile, you can add them by clicking either Friend or Noise at the upper right of their profile:
They will be instantly added to that Following group, and their posts will appear in the right panel of that group’s view on your home page.
User Stats
Each user profile gives you three stats for that user (see illustration above).
Posts: This number is a combination of actual original posta and all the comments that user has created. In other words. Comments are counted as “posts.”
Following: The number of users this user is following. Click on “Following” to see a list of the users. You can follow any of them from this list.
Followers: The number of people following this user. Click on “Followers” to see a list of these users. You can follow any of them from this list.
5. Finding Users on Ello
Currently it is not easy to find Ello users unless you know their profile name. If you do know (or can guess) their profile name, you can find their profile by entering http://ello.co/xxx in your browser’s URL bar, where xxx=username.
There are, however, a few ways to discover users you may already know, or just to come across interesting users you don’t know but might want to add.
Discover Page
At present, the Discover page doesn’t have much usefulness. No doubt Ello has plans to make it more useful in the future.
You get to the Discover page by clicking the Control Panel icon that looks like a tiny silhouette of a person with a plus sign attached.
The Discover page opens in the right panel. It is a seemingly random (but perhaps curated?) list of users you don’t currently follow. There is a search box at the top but it doesn’t do anything (yet).
Discovering Users Via Other Users
For now perhaps the best way to find people worth following is by watching for them in the profiles and posts of other Ello users.
You can view a list of the followers of and those followed by any user on their profile, but clicking the links under the user’s profile name.
You can then scroll down the list and use the Friend/Noise buttons next to each profile listing to follow any you wish. If one of the choices is already grey, uou are already following that user.
6. Posting and Commenting on Ello
Creating a New Post
Posts on Ello are created in the Omni Box. The Omni Box appears at the top of the right panel on the home page. If you are currently not seeing an Omni Box, go to Home (click the black smiley face Ello logo at upper left).
The Omni Box unexpanded looks like a black speech bubble coming from your profile avatar, and contains the text “Say Ello…”
Click inside the Omni Box to create a post. The box expands and turns grey to let you know you are in post edit mode. You can now type inside the box:
There are a lot of nice tricks for formatting your text, but we’ll get to those in chapter 8.
You can also add an image to a post by simply dragging and dropping the image file from your computer’s desktop or file listing window. Drop it anywhere in the Omni Box. It will be added below the existing text placeholder.
Notice that Ello has automatically created a new placeholder box below the image. You can ignore that box, or enter more text or drag in another image.
Alternatively, you can upload an image into the post by clicking the upload button in the set of post control buttons just below the lower right of the Omni Box:
Each placeholder has two tiny control icons in its upper right region. The “x” will delete that placeholder and its contents. When your post has more than one filled placeholder, you can use the three-horizontal-lines icon to drag any placeholder up of down and change the order of the placeholders.
Basic Text Formatting
I’ll cover Ello Markdown, which allows some pretty sophisticated formatting of text, in chapter 8. For now I’ll show you how to quickly and easily make bold or italicized text.
There are two ways to create bold or italicized text in an Ello post or comment:
On-the-fly. To turn on bold or italics as you type, hit CMD-b (Mac) or CTRL-b (PC) for bold or CMD-i (Mac) or CTRL-i (PC) for italics. When you have reached the end of text you want to format, press those same keys to turn off the formating.
After typing. You can format text already created by highlighting it. Ello pops up a small box above the text. Click B to make the highlighted text bold or I to make it italicized. (Note: this only works in a post Omni Box, not in comment boxes.)
Creating a Link
Ello allows you to create hypertext anchor links in posts and comments. These appear just like links you’re used to seeing on web pages, with underlined text that when clicked jumps the user to the linked location.
To create a link in an Ello post or comment, first copy the link URL so it is your computer’s clipboard memory. Then highlight the text you want to use as the anchor text for the link (the text that will be underlined and “clickable”). Ello will pop up the same formatting popup shown in the previous section. Click the arrow button (third button) and you’ll see an “Add Link…” box.
Click in that box and paste in the link URL you’d saved to the clipboard. Press Return (Enter) to create the link. (Hint: if you are doing no further additions or edits to the post after adding the link, it is best to click elsewhere in the post before publishing. If you don’t, the link text may get deleted because it is still highlighted.
Publishing a Post
Once you are done creating and editing a post, there are two ways to publish it to your profile and make it visible to all your followers.
Mouse method: Click on the right arrow icon in the post controls below the Omni Box. (The X cancels the post.)
Keyboard method: Since the Return or Enter key creates a new line when inside the Omni Box, a key combination with that key is used to publish.
On a PC use CTRL-Enter (hold down the CTRL key while pressing Enter)
On a Mac, use CMD-Return (hold down the Command key while pressing Return)
Editing, Deleting, or Linking a Published Post
At any time after a post is published, you can do several things with it, using the controls that appear under each of your posts:
The post controls from left to right:
Edit Post (pencil icon): Clicking this button puts the post back in edit mode. You may make any changes, and then republish it using the same methods as stated above.
Delete Post (x in a box icon): Clicking this button will permanently delete the post. Deleted posts can not be recovered.
Time Stamp (number and letter): This indicates the amount of time that has passed since the post was published. s=seconds, m-minutes, h=hours, d=days. To grab a link to a post right click on the time stamp and select save or copy the link/URL. That link may then be used elsewhere (inside or outside Ello) as a link to this post.
View Count (eyeball icon): The number to the right of the eyeball indicates the number of views of the post so far.
Comments (three dots icon): Clicking this button opens up the comment thread (if any) for the post, and a comment box to add a new comment. If there are already any comments for this post, the number of comments is shown to the right of the button.
Commenting on Posts
To comment on any post, whether your own, or another user’s, click the three-dots button under the post:
A black box will appear next to your profile avatar with the legend “Comment…” in it:
Click in the black box. It will expand and turn grey to indicate you are in comment edit mode. Type your comment, and use the keyboard publish shortcuts listed for post publishing above, or click the arrow button at the lower right to publish the comment.
There are several “rules” about comments on Ello:
A post can have any number of comments (actually, we don’t know yet if there’s a limit).
You can comment any number of times in a thread.
The person who “owns” the thread (who created the post above to which the comments are attached) will get a notification for each new comment.
No one else in the thread gets a notification of a new comment unless the commenter @mentions them in the comment (see below for more about @mentions).
Comments are listed in reverse chronological order; that is, the newest comment is at the top.
Responding to an Individual Comment
At present Ello has no capacity to click-and-reply to an individual comment. If you want to reply to the comment of another user in a thread, it is best to @mention them (type an @ symbol and their username with no space in between) in your comment. Not only does that make clear to whom your reply is addressed, but that user will also get a notification that you mentioned them in a comment.
Editing, Deleting, and Linking to a Comment
Each of your comments, once published, shows three control buttons under it (see image above).
Edit (pencil icon): Clicking this will put the comment back in edit mode where you may make any changes.
Delete (x in box icon): Clicking this will permanently delete the icon. (If there are comments from other users in a thread under a post you created, you can delete, but not edit, those comments.
Time Stamp (time since publishing of the comment): This is for reference only. Unlike posts, you cannot grab a link to an individual comment.
Comment Notifications in the Home Stream
If someone makes a comment on one of your posts, their comment will show up in your home timeline in the Friends view:
Clicking on the link “@username commented on our post” will take you to the original post, showing the comment in context.
Mentioning Other Users
In Ello you can @mention any other user in either a comment or a post. Doing this sends a notification to the user that you mentioned them.
To @mention someone in a post or comment, simply type an “at” symbol (@) immediately followed by the user’s username, with no space between the at symbol and the username.
When published, an @mention turns into a live link. Clicking an @mention of any user takes you to that user’s profile page.
7. Ello Best Practices: How to Become a Super User
I’ll be expanding this section a good deal in future revisions, but here are some initial tips I’ve discovered on how to get the most out of Ello
Don’t Cross the Streams (But Do Switch Them!)
Don’t cross the streams! “Ghostbusters logo” by Self-traced in Adobe Illustrator. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.
As described above, Ello affords users with a way of sorting users they follow into two groups: Friends (“signal) or Noise.
To get a better Ello experience (and increase your chances of becoming better known and more followed), be sure to regularly switch between views of the two streams. It may be tempting to stay mostly in your Friends view because of the more familiar faces there, as well as increased engagement. But remember you followed the users in your Noise stream for a reason! The Noise view is where you can discover new and unexpected things and people.
(Remember: You can enhance your view of the Noise stream by pressing your keyboard’s right arrow (to hide the left panel) and then pressing SHIFT-5 to expand all the posts.)
When you comment on posts in your Noise stream it is more likely you are being exposed to users who would not run across you otherwise. So you have an opportunity to gain new followers as people there see how brilliant and witty you are!
Over time you will also want to make adjustments, moving Noise users with whom you build relationships (or find very valuable) to your Friends group, and moving Friends who are too noisy to Noise.
Resharing
At present, there is no built-in facility for resharing a post from another user. Until there is, here are some workaround suggestions:
Copy the URL of the post you want to share (right-click on the timestamp under the post) and then link to it from a post of your own. (You should probably do that for any of the methods below as well, for proper credit and so people can visit and comment on the original post.)
Copy the contents of the post (if it is just a text post) and paste it into your own post, setting it off with quotation marks, in italics, or as a formatted quote (see chapter 8). Always add some text making clear where the quoted post came from (and @mention the creator).
If you want to reshare an image posted on Ello, right click on it and save it to your computer, then upload it to your own post. Before sharing any image on a social network be sure you have clear rights to share it, and that you give any necessary attributions required by the image’s creator or owner!
Engaging
“Being engaging” is such a common piece of social media advice now that it borders on the cliche. But I’ve found that adding meaningful comments on Ello posts, or @mentioning relevant users into my more thoughtful posts, is one of the best ways to quickly build a great following.
Because other users in a comment thread (except for the owner of the original post) don’t get notified of new comments, be sure to @mention any in the thread whom you want to see your reply to keep the conversation going.
8. Extras: Text Formatting, Emojis and Ello Services
Formatting Text
Aside from the method of bolding and italicizing text I showed you in chapter 6, Ello supports a number of inline formatting codes known as Ello Markdown.
(The following information is from the official Ello help pages.
Making text Bold and Italic
Surround the text you want to format using asterix (*) symbols.
To create italics, use a single asterix on either side of a block of text, like this:
*This text will be italic*
This text will be italic.
Surrounding text by two asterix makes text bold:
**This text will be bold**
This text will be bold
Both * or _ symbols work to make text bold or italic. This way you can combine bold and italic as needed in the same sentence. For example:
**Everyone _must_ drink beer at 7 o’clock today.**
Everyone must drink beer at 7 o’clock today.
Strikethrough
Put a double ~ symbol on either side of the text you want to strikethrough. For example:
~~I don’t like cheese~~
I don’t like cheese
Bulleted Lists
Make a bulleted list by preceding list items with a single asterix (*). Note that you need a space between the asterix and the text.
Clean Shaven
Bearded
Furry
Numbered Lists
Create a numbered list by preceding list items with a number.
Apple.
Banana.
Vaseline.
Links
Create a text link by wrapping the linked text in brackets [ ], and then wrapping the link in parenthesis ( ).
For example, type this:
[Visit Ello Now!](https://www.ello.co)
and get this:
Visit Ello Now!
Emojis
Ello supports the use of inline emojis in the posts and comments. emojis are tiny symbols that can be used to express a variety of emotions or just add a bit of style or humor to your text.
Examples of emojis:
To add an emoji in any Ello Omni box, type a colon (:), the name of the emoji, and another colon (:). Leave no spaces between the colons and the emoji name. When the post or comment is published, Ello will show the named emoji in place of the emoji markdown text.
:thumbsup: :heart: :frog:
A great list of emojis can be found at http://www.emoji-cheat-sheet.com/ – Just click on any emoji there to copy its markdown code to your clipboard, then paste it into your Ello comment or post.
Reporting Bugs and General Feedback
If you find a bug or have feedback or suggestions for Ello, the owners ask you to email to hello@ello.co
Reporting Abuse, Fake Profiles, and Spam
Send an email report with full details to reportabuse@ello.co
Is Ello Down?
Get the latest status of Ello at http://status.ello.co/# You can also sign up there to get an email notification of any status changes.
This document is copyright ©2014 Stone Temple Consulting. You may copy and distribute the downloadable version of this guide, but must include its entire contents unaltered, and you may not charge for the guide nor use it as part of any sales or promotions without explicit written permission from Stone Temple Consulting. This guide may not be reproduced on the web without permission.