Boulder design firm helps drive Ello, dubbed the anti-Facebook
In a small office tucked off a parking garage in downtown Boulder sits an engine behind one of the biggest movements on the web this week.
At Berger & Fohr a slick, modern and minimalistic graphic design studio bathed in white and dashed in black the three-man firm quietly works on building out Ello.co, an ad-free social networking site that quickly developed a thundering online presence in a few days' span.
From Tuesday through Friday, legions of Internet users flocked to Ello, which was dubbed as the anti-Facebook and built on a "manifesto" of principles such as transparency, simplicity, empowerment and no ads or data-sharing.
"It was steadily ramping up," said Todd Berger, co-founder of Ello. "Then it exploded."
Ello is the brainchild of Berger, Lucian Fohr, the principals of Denver-based Mode Set and Paul Budnitz, an entrepreneur who brought KidRobot to Boulder and now runs Budnitz Bicycles in Vermont.
About 16 months ago, the friends and colleagues developed the site as a private community for them and about 100 other designers and artists. The community was meant to be an ad-free environment to share thoughts, works and words.
It became apparent that the members of the community wanted to share what they had with friends.
The Ello that people see now was created earlier this year and, in stealth mode, started to expand in a slow and deliberate manner, Berger said. As the wait list for Ello grew, Berger and crew decided to open the site a bit, allowing some users in and giving them 10 invitations apiece for the private beta site.
"We were seeing this," Berger said, propping his arm at a 45-degree angle. "It was exponential."
Then on Tuesday, that all changed.
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Boulder design firm helps drive Ello, dubbed the anti-Facebook