• by Katie Meier , September 29, 2014

Last week, everyone from my sister who is a puppeteer to my friend who is a stockbroker found out about the social network ello. Very simply, it’s blowing up because its brand is anti-ad. Or -- it’s the new playground to be on. Maybe it doesn’t matter which. Both smack of sideswipes of media born from social resistance.

The anti-ad brand model that ello is defining is different than simply “being against advertising revenue.” Ello is the first conversation to drop on the public radar about whether we, as a collective consciousness of digital users, want to start talking about the ad model that is ruling the world.

Ello’s brand is this conversation. By signing up for ello -- whether you think it’s the best way to beat Facebook or you really get what they’re doing as social resistors in an ad-supported world -- you’re on the front lines of a conversation about what other models will work in the future to pay for the connectivity we cherish.

This makes you part of the burgeoning social resistance that’s sideswiping media in a number of ways, worldwide, from artists exposing surveillance to rulings like the Right to be Forgotten that are making law out of the fact that people’s lives aren’t necessarily public property.

As of last week, 31,000 people a day were waiting to sign up for ello to join that conversation.

Where it becomes really interesting is what ello does with these people, and who among them takes on the badge of the social resistor, which means building a new world with ello, rather than joining just to get on the playground to follow the herd.

The reason to put ello on your radar screen isn’t because it’s just another social network. It’s because it is the anti-advertising social network.