Dive Brief:
- Ello, the social platform that promised anonymity and no ads, may just have been a passing fad.
- Searches for Ello spiked at the end of September after Facebook ran into trouble by blocking out drag queens for using a stage name rather than their legal names.
- The ad-free social site — still in beta and invitation only —experienced a spike of 1 million users and was receiving 100,000 daily requests at the beginning of October. Now searches have hit a low equal to when the site was first starting out.
Dive Insight:
Without ads, it was always questionable if Ello could actually support the kind of attention it was receiving. That doesn't mean it didn't have Facebook worried a bit as the social giant released plans for an anonymous app shortly after Ello started its surge. Many other social platforms have tried to battle Facebook, but since the site has apologized for the controversy with drag queens and stage names—the massive migration to Ello seems unlikely now.
