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Consumer apps that rely on Google Hangouts won't work after April 25th
When Google launched Allo and Duo last year, it recast hangouts as a cross-platform chat app for enterprise customers. Now it's making changes to help ensure that fate. A quiet update to the Google Hangouts FAQ reveals that the sun will set on the platform's API in late April. Effectively, this means any consumer app that integrates with Google Hangouts will be dead in a matter of months.
Ello's ad-free social network comes to the iPhone
When Ello came into the social networking scene late last year as an ad-free alternative to Facebook, it was pretty barebones in terms of features. That didn't stop it from gaining hundreds of thousands of users in a few short days and around a million new sign-ups in under a month. Ello's growth has slowed since the initial hype, but its feature set has blossomed -- search and notifications are much better, you can now post videos from YouTube and audio from SoundCloud, there are now ways to block bothersome users and you can also now "love" posts so you can revisit them later. A couple of weeks ago, Ello even removed its invitation-only restriction. Today, it's making an even bigger announcement: after months simply relying on the phone's browser for its mobile presence, Ello finally has an app.
Mark Zuckerberg defends free Facebook, fires back at Apple and Ello
When Tim Cook published an open letter in September to address iCloud privacy and security concerns, he said free online services treat you, the consumers, as product. Even newcomer Ello, which is dubbed the anti-Facebook, has a manifesto that ends with: "You are not a product." Well, those sharp words have found their mark in Zuckerberg (pun totally intended), and it sounds like they hit him where it hurts -- so much so that he's just unleashed some biting commentary of his own, despite previously declaring his respect for Cook as a leader. In an interview with Time magazine about his plans to get the world online with Internet.org, the social media mogul irritably defended Facebook's free / ad-supported model, against what he sees as charges that an advertising business model is fundamentally misaligned with customer's interests. The way he sees it, if Apple were truly aligned with customers then it would charge less for all of those iThings it's selling.
Ello's charter makes it legally impossible for it to display ads
Ello debuted with a big, idealistic promise: to be a different kind of social network unswayed by the influence of advertisers or corporate overlords. The notion was immediately questioned by just about everyone, but the startup is sticking to the idea. Today it announced that its advertiser-free status will be permanent, since it's becoming a Public Benefit Corporation. Under Delaware law, a PBC is a special kind of for-profit entity that is legally obligated to consider the public impact of its actions. As such, the company has drawn up a company charter that bars the firm from ever selling user data or displaying ads from a third-party entity -- and the company isn't allowed to sell itself unless the buyer agrees to abide by these rules, too. It's still not clear if Ello will last the in the long run, but if it does, at least there won't be any ads.
Ello has notifications and the ability to mute that annoying 'friend,' too
The newest social network on the block, Ello, has a shiny trick up its sleeve. Next time you log in, you should see a change to how notifications are handled now. Instead of cluttering your Friends and Noise feeds with call-outs about invites, following and @ mentions, those have been moved to what Ello calls the notifications drawer. Any previous @ mentions have been removed from feeds and transferred there, with the outfit noting that if you received emails about those updates you should be fine. However, if you have emails turned off, those notifications "may" no longer exist. Speaking of email, there's a new settings page to check out that'll let you change what actions will spark a message.
What you need to know about Facebook's battle with drag queens (update)
Maybe you've seen RuPaul's Drag Race, the flagship show on Logo TV, where men (dressed as women) compete to become America's next drag superstar. At the end of each show, the lowest-scoring competitors "lip sync for their life" in order to stay on the show another week. Now, some drag queens are fighting for their social media lives.
New Oculus Rift, the Blackberry Passport and other stories you might've missed
It's the weekend, ya'll. So while you sit back and relax, check out our news highlights from the last seven days -- we took the new Oculus Rift for a spin, went hands-on with the Blackberry Passport, made an Ello account, and more. Oh, and be sure to subscribe to our Flipboard magazine!
Say Ello to the anti-Facebook
Ello seems to have come out of nowhere. The creators are designers and artists. Its CEO, Paul Budnitz, makes toys. There's no big marketing push and no obvious ties to Silicon Valley. These are not the typical building blocks of a hot new social network. Yet, people are joining it in droves. In the past few days, Ello has seen an incredible influx of new users. Its network more than quadrupled in size and there's no sign of it slowing down. As I'm writing this, I'm told that Ello has gained nearly 20,000 new users in just the past hour. A quick scan of my Twitter and Facebook feeds reveals a whole slew of my friends have joined the service, which is a remarkable achievement considering Ello is still at the invite-only stage. Only existing users can invite those looking to sign up, which means it's mostly spreading by word-of-mouth. Ello had to stop taking invites because its servers were slammed. People are even selling Ello invitations on eBay for $100 a pop. So what's the big deal with Ello? And why is it so popular all of a sudden? The short answer: It's not Facebook.
