Social media users saying goodbye to FB, hello to Ello

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- In the social media landscape there's Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and now something called Ello. Over the last two weeks, the upstart platform has been growing fast. It bills itself as the anti-Facebook.

Ian Sherr is one of the lucky ones who's been invited to join Ello. He covers social media for CNET.

"People who find Facebook to be too cluttered, they find it to be too complex, they don't like Facebook for whatever reasons, this is a place they can go," he said.

He gave us a short tour through the bare bones social media site. It looks a little bit like Instagram with a touch of Pinterest.

"A couple days ago I spoke with the CEO," said Sherr. "He said they were getting roughly 35,000 signups per hour, which is pretty big, but it's nowhere close to the 1.3 billion that Facebook is living in, right."

The CEO, Paul Budnitz, says Ello is designed to be stripped down and simple. It's a site with a rebellious attitude, with a manifesto vowing not sell user's personal data to third parties.

Some of the interest in Ello is being boosted by the recent dust up between Facebook and drag queens over identities.

"I've gotten tons of people asking me if I'd like an invite to Ello," said Sister Roma. "It just seems to have come out of nowhere, it's kind of amazing."

Sister Roma, with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, has been leading the campaign against a Facebook policy that forces users to list their real names in profiles. But she has not signed up for Ello, yet.

"I know that Facebook is a great ally of the LGBT community," she said. "And they have a problem -- they have a policy that is unfair and discriminatory and they need to address it. And I need Facebook to get that message out, ironically."

Sherr says Ello may become a smaller alternative site, but becoming a replacement will be much harder.

"Taking on Facebook, which is a multi-billion dollar company, that is hard," he said. "And it's smart of Ello to say, 'we're not doing that, we are trying to offer a niche alternative around privacy and a promise to you that we will never show you an ad.'"

A couple days ago, Ello's creators had to freeze all invites to the site because it's getting overwhelmed with new users.

As for Facebook, next week a delegation from San Francisco's LGBT community will be having a second meeting at its headquarters to discuss the social media giant's identity policy.