Ello.

I was on Skype with T one night when he asked if I'm on Ello --

What the heck is Ello -- that was pretty much the first question I popped out. He sent me an invite. So I joined.

Ello is, at the moment, on it's Beta stage. Founded by Paul Budnitz -- it is ad-free (and I love everything ad-free), independent and as of today, joining is only by invitation (makes it more exclusive - for now at least).
And I, especially like what they're preaching -- the fact that social medias are owned by advertisers but they (Ello team) are against selling personal datas.


Source: Condenast UK
The interface, to me, is a mashup between Twitter and Tumblr with a little bit of Google+ thrown in. Very image-centric -- probably created by artists for people in the same community. You can update statuses but Ello lacks the reblog/like function Tumblr has and it is certainly not a news feed kind like Twitter.

It has a really clean interface but may not be user friendly for baby-boomers.

I quite like this new guy in town. But I'm not quite sure how long it will be around -- maybe it will end up being like MySpace or Second Life or any of those sites that were "famous" for a while.

But who knows. Perhaps the founders will listen to his new members and give them ("us") what they ("we") want -- then it could be the next thing to Facebook :)