September 27, 2014 archive

Sep 27

Yesterday I wrote a piece about “The Importance of The ‘Known’ Publishing Platform And The Rise Of The Indie Web” – at the end I

Yesterday I wrote a piece about "The Importance of The 'Known' Publishing Platform And The Rise Of The Indie Web" - at the end I also had a brief commentary on the difference between Known and Ello - http://www.disruptiveconversations.com/2014/09/the-importance-of-the-known-publishing-platform-and-the-rise-of-the-indie-web.html

Sep 27

3 Quick Tips About Getting Started With Ello

Ello smileAs I've started playing with Ello, the new social network that many early adopters are experimenting with (and you can find me at https://ello.co/danyork), I've learned a few things that I thought I'd share in case they can help others who are getting started:

1. ELLO SUPPORTS MARKDOWN FOR TEXT FORMATTING

Ello allows you to do some formatting to your text using a subset of John Gruber's Markdown syntax. It's not the full Markdown syntax, but a good bit of it. You can read more at:

https://ello.co/wtf/post/using-ello-markdown-to-format-text

You can see some of my Markdown experiments in an Ello post.

2. ELLO SUPPORTS A WIDE RANGE OF EMOJI

You can use a wide range of emoji in your Ello posts. You may want to bookmark:

http://www.emoji-cheat-sheet.com/

To use an emoji you just type the text in your Ello post, for example ":smile:" will give you a smile. I've seen many different emoji being used in posts.

3. GIVING A "BREAD" EMOJI IS A "LIKE" OR "+1"

C.C. Chapman clued me in that while Ello doesn't have a "Like" or a "+1" (yet, anyway), apparently the convention has developed that people will leave you a "bread" emoji in a reply to say they like this. So if you suddenly see comments with bread emoticons, that's what is going on. To leave one yourself, just type ":bread:" in the comments.

(And I'd love it if someone on Ello could explain how that convention came about...)
UPDATE 28 Sep 2014: @brdr on Ello says the 'bread' emoji usage originated with German Ello users and spread throughout the network.

Those are just a few of the things I've discovered in my playing around with the site. If there are other tips you've learned, please feel free to leave them here as comments... or leave them in response to the link to this post on Ello.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either: