I remember when ello was first around and gaining some hype, some kind of minimal black and white facebook. I thought it was dumb and lame back then and now I feel kind of vindicated! Yes yes my...
I remember when ello was first around and gaining some hype, some kind of minimal black and white facebook.
I thought it was dumb and lame back then and now I feel kind of vindicated! Yes yes my reasoning was petty, but it's the small things in life.
Anyway, don't trust people who take VC money and purport to only be doing a social good, they're incredibly hard concepts to reconcile. It was no shock reading what the creator of it went on to do:
After leaving Ello in 2016, Budnitz returned to his Kidrobot roots with the launch of Superplastic in 2017, a vinyl figure company that expanded into NFTs and the metaverse in 2022, raising a total of $68M in seven rounds of funding, led by Amazon. Superplastic appears to have abandoned its NFT projects last year as the market cratered, and Budnitz stepped down from his CEO role in September, replaced by the former president of blockchain gaming company Dapper Labs. They are now focused on “synthetic celebrities” and AI influencers.
Stories like this reinforce my believe that on some level, if you want your own space that you control on the internet, you have to make it. Make a website, make a blog, post your thoughts, get in...
Stories like this reinforce my believe that on some level, if you want your own space that you control on the internet, you have to make it. Make a website, make a blog, post your thoughts, get in touch with people. Platforms come and go but your site is your site. It's how things used to be online, it's how things could be again. Social media obviously has its uses, even with the current state its in, but seeking permanence there is a fraught endeavor, seemingly.
I'm fairly ambivalent about permanence. I don't trust my memory, but I'm not really sure what I want to remember. I've come to a few conclusions, though: Old email can be useful, but its...
I'm fairly ambivalent about permanence. I don't trust my memory, but I'm not really sure what I want to remember. I've come to a few conclusions, though:
Old email can be useful, but its importance decays nearly to nothing in a few years. I do like having my email searchable and sometimes fish out account information, but never look at my pre-gmail archives.
Photos are really important. Even if they're not great photos, it's where I go to find out what I was doing on a certain date. Sometimes I take a photo just to remember what I did. Take photos of places you go and people you meet. (It doesn't have to be a lot of photos.)
By contrast, I find old home videos unbearable to watch.
I have a few hundred CD's that I never listen to, as backup for all the music in iTunes that I never listen to either. I'm still listening to music, but it's mostly live performances on YouTube. I really appreciate the people who rip old concert DVD's and upload songs from them. I can't remember the last time I played a DVD.
Mom listens to the recordings I posted to YouTube, which is good enough reason to make them (along with being a practice goal).
I've had some some social media accounts cancelled: Google+ and two Mastodon accounts. (Hopefully the third time is the charm?) I downloaded everything from Google+ and still have the backup, but I can't be bothered to do anything with it. The dated news stories that I shared back then are not that important to me.
When I started my first blog, I believed that "cool URL's don't change." It's still there on the web, with lots of broken outgoing links, but I don't really care about what I wrote there enough to fix anything. It's more important to keep writing than to look at your old writing.
Although, I do find it useful to search my profile on Tildes sometimes to find articles that I've read before.
Substack didn't work out for me, just like my first blog didn't work out, because I have little interest in doing the work required to finish polished essays. If I don't finish writing something in one sitting (like I do here), it's too much work. And I'm reluctant to post unfinished work on Substack because if I post anything there, it will email 25 complete strangers who subscribed.
I'm writing some personal blogging / forum / link-keeping software to give it another go. I think the way to go might be to think of it is as research notes primarily for myself but done in public, for articles or books that I probably will never write. It will have RSS and upvotes and comments because not getting any feedback is lonely, but won't send email.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! I agree on the assessment of the value of old emails vs pictures, but would throw out that home videos of kids are a lot of fun to look back on as a parent. I...
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I agree on the assessment of the value of old emails vs pictures, but would throw out that home videos of kids are a lot of fun to look back on as a parent.
I also did some writing, blogging, and write book reviews and your description of doing personal writing in public is a good one. I bet much wrote what I needed to write to grow a skill, and if it helped someone else, great, if not, doing it in public still challenged me to do a better job.
I'll admit that watching old Super 8 movies was/is fun. We didn't have a video camera when I grew up. The videos we have were taken by my aunt. I still haven't watched my high school graduation...
I'll admit that watching old Super 8 movies was/is fun. We didn't have a video camera when I grew up. The videos we have were taken by my aunt. I still haven't watched my high school graduation video and I don't want to.
This kind of thing is one reason I have never taken on any VC funding, and have self funded every one of my projects. They took longer to get off the ground and maybe didn’t make as much money as...
This kind of thing is one reason I have never taken on any VC funding, and have self funded every one of my projects. They took longer to get off the ground and maybe didn’t make as much money as they could have, but I have always had control without outside pressure.
I remember Ello. It needed a better value proposition than "we're not ad-driven". That's not a useful organizing basis for a whole social network. People flock to social networks because they...
I remember Ello.
It needed a better value proposition than "we're not ad-driven". That's not a useful organizing basis for a whole social network. People flock to social networks because they offer new and interesting ways to engage with content and other people.
isn’t manifesto and license legally binding? Why there was no legal action against Ello? Too many red flags, I think it was best summarised by Rose Eveleth:
isn’t manifesto and license legally binding? Why there was no legal action against Ello?
Too many red flags, I think it was best summarised by Rose Eveleth:
The fact that you, the user, even exist and use their site makes you a product. Ello already has some amount of seed funding from VCs, which means it will need to return to them with something in hand if it wants more. And when it does, or when it is eventually bought by a larger company, you are part of that transaction—a key line in the sales pitch. Your existence on that site is a unit of currency, and it’s a unit that Ello is selling to whoever will give them money for it.
I don't don't think this metaphor works all that well. It's true that many companies are valued because they have a lot of customers, but just because someone likes Starbucks (or whatever) doesn't...
I don't don't think this metaphor works all that well. It's true that many companies are valued because they have a lot of customers, but just because someone likes Starbucks (or whatever) doesn't make them a Starbucks product. The fans of a hit TV show aren't a product either.
It's also true that sometimes businesses and websites don't last. But how much risk did Ello users really take? If you had a good time for a while and then left, you can think of it as enjoying hanging out at a bar or restaurant that later closes.
Anti-capitalist rhetoric would have you believe that if you enjoyed something that eventually ended, you were somehow exploited. But the world changes, you will outlive many good things, and life goes on.
I remember when ello was first around and gaining some hype, some kind of minimal black and white facebook.
I thought it was dumb and lame back then and now I feel kind of vindicated! Yes yes my reasoning was petty, but it's the small things in life.
Anyway, don't trust people who take VC money and purport to only be doing a social good, they're incredibly hard concepts to reconcile. It was no shock reading what the creator of it went on to do:
Stories like this reinforce my believe that on some level, if you want your own space that you control on the internet, you have to make it. Make a website, make a blog, post your thoughts, get in touch with people. Platforms come and go but your site is your site. It's how things used to be online, it's how things could be again. Social media obviously has its uses, even with the current state its in, but seeking permanence there is a fraught endeavor, seemingly.
I'm fairly ambivalent about permanence. I don't trust my memory, but I'm not really sure what I want to remember. I've come to a few conclusions, though:
Old email can be useful, but its importance decays nearly to nothing in a few years. I do like having my email searchable and sometimes fish out account information, but never look at my pre-gmail archives.
Photos are really important. Even if they're not great photos, it's where I go to find out what I was doing on a certain date. Sometimes I take a photo just to remember what I did. Take photos of places you go and people you meet. (It doesn't have to be a lot of photos.)
By contrast, I find old home videos unbearable to watch.
I have a few hundred CD's that I never listen to, as backup for all the music in iTunes that I never listen to either. I'm still listening to music, but it's mostly live performances on YouTube. I really appreciate the people who rip old concert DVD's and upload songs from them. I can't remember the last time I played a DVD.
Mom listens to the recordings I posted to YouTube, which is good enough reason to make them (along with being a practice goal).
I've had some some social media accounts cancelled: Google+ and two Mastodon accounts. (Hopefully the third time is the charm?) I downloaded everything from Google+ and still have the backup, but I can't be bothered to do anything with it. The dated news stories that I shared back then are not that important to me.
When I started my first blog, I believed that "cool URL's don't change." It's still there on the web, with lots of broken outgoing links, but I don't really care about what I wrote there enough to fix anything. It's more important to keep writing than to look at your old writing.
Although, I do find it useful to search my profile on Tildes sometimes to find articles that I've read before.
Substack didn't work out for me, just like my first blog didn't work out, because I have little interest in doing the work required to finish polished essays. If I don't finish writing something in one sitting (like I do here), it's too much work. And I'm reluctant to post unfinished work on Substack because if I post anything there, it will email 25 complete strangers who subscribed.
I'm writing some personal blogging / forum / link-keeping software to give it another go. I think the way to go might be to think of it is as research notes primarily for myself but done in public, for articles or books that I probably will never write. It will have RSS and upvotes and comments because not getting any feedback is lonely, but won't send email.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I agree on the assessment of the value of old emails vs pictures, but would throw out that home videos of kids are a lot of fun to look back on as a parent.
I also did some writing, blogging, and write book reviews and your description of doing personal writing in public is a good one. I bet much wrote what I needed to write to grow a skill, and if it helped someone else, great, if not, doing it in public still challenged me to do a better job.
Have a great night!
I'll admit that watching old Super 8 movies was/is fun. We didn't have a video camera when I grew up. The videos we have were taken by my aunt. I still haven't watched my high school graduation video and I don't want to.
Oh God, watching old videos of myself? No no no. Watching old videos of my kids, of other family, yes!
I really enjoyed Ello, but a platform like that is only as good as its users, and the community lost interest after a couple of years.
This kind of thing is one reason I have never taken on any VC funding, and have self funded every one of my projects. They took longer to get off the ground and maybe didn’t make as much money as they could have, but I have always had control without outside pressure.
I remember Ello.
It needed a better value proposition than "we're not ad-driven". That's not a useful organizing basis for a whole social network. People flock to social networks because they offer new and interesting ways to engage with content and other people.
isn’t manifesto and license legally binding? Why there was no legal action against Ello?
Too many red flags, I think it was best summarised by Rose Eveleth:
I don't don't think this metaphor works all that well. It's true that many companies are valued because they have a lot of customers, but just because someone likes Starbucks (or whatever) doesn't make them a Starbucks product. The fans of a hit TV show aren't a product either.
It's also true that sometimes businesses and websites don't last. But how much risk did Ello users really take? If you had a good time for a while and then left, you can think of it as enjoying hanging out at a bar or restaurant that later closes.
Anti-capitalist rhetoric would have you believe that if you enjoyed something that eventually ended, you were somehow exploited. But the world changes, you will outlive many good things, and life goes on.