The Guardian: “Ello is the ‘anti-facebook’, positioning itself as a network with a social conscience. It might not be the one to replace the social giant, but Facebook is getting old”
Ello or another competing service won’t be the answer. What Facebook and other social networks offer is “good enough” for what people currently want.
My prediction is that what will foil Facebook is some sort of change in the infrastructure of the internet. If someone can make the infrastructure more decentralized, so that we are less dependent upon information silos like Facebook, and yet find better ways of tying it together, that would do it.
Examples of early moves in this direction are GNU Social, OwnCloud, Friendica, Red Matrix, Pump.io and especially Twister. Twister makes it possible to use any computer as a decentralized network hub, without needing Apache or other web server software or tying an IP address to a name server. It uses BitCoin technology. But all these are baby steps. We need something new, that makes decentralization really easy and user friendly, but which somehow gives big companies the opportunity to make money. Without the money incentive, it probably won’t happen.