Renegade social site Ello now has ads via YouTube

Remember Ello? Not until you just read that, I bet. The ‘Facebook killer’ social network was ad-free, and a bit of fun for a week or so. Various brands latched onto it as a new medium to share themselves with the world, with its stripped-down interface and stark indifference to social as we know it. A big selling point for Ello was ads, where none existed. According to the founders, none would, either. Until today, with the rollout of video and music on Ello.



If you were to link to a YouTube video in Ello before today, it would just be a link. If you pasted a YouTube link right now, it would play. You’d even hear it (sound was something that Ello didn’t support before today, either).

To be fair, Ello isn’t natively adding ads into the service. Instead, they’re just letting things with ads find their way to Ello. It’s tantamount to someone posting ads or links for their business on Ello. Which many websites did when it launched — it was a series of ads for their website.

Still, it’s 2015, and Ello just got video. On their “to-do” list is Audio integration (like Soundcloud), multimedia commenting, and auto-pushing of posts to other social networks. In a roundabout sort of way, all those services also violate the “no ads” mantra Ello has been chanting from day one.

But they have a manifesto, so there’s that.

Via: TechCrunch

