I’ve seen a lot of comparisons between Ello and App.net over the last few days and I thought it might be fun to compare Ello.co and App.net from a user count perspective. I’ve been very loosely observing the number of Ello users since I joined a little over three weeks ago.
How?
Just as you can view your Twitter id number, you can also view this number on Ello by looking at your avatar URL. My avatar URL is:
http://d324imu86q1bqn.cloudfront.net/uploads/user/avatar/6320/large_Jayson_Lane.png
Notice “6320", that’s my id number. Although I do not know for sure, I suspect they’re automatically incrementing by 1, a fairly common practice. By searching Twitter for “ello.co” you can find users who have just joined and posted their profile URL. As of today the latest I’ve seen is around 244k – a massive jump from just a few days ago.
Today I created an App.net user and was assigned an id in the 290k range. If user ids are indeed incrementing by 1, it appears as though Ello will soon exceed the number of users App.net had over it’s entire lifecycle. It took App.net 9 months to hit the 100k mark.
Okay, so?
I have no idea what Ello will be in a few weeks and I certainly don’t want to call it the “next big thing” or claim it to be a “Facebook killer”. However, I can tell you this: it may end the same but at this point it looks like Ello is very different from App.net.
Speculate on.