I heard there had been a redesign of the briefly trendy ad-free social network Ello — an announcement that did not receive as much media attention as the new $5 million funding round for the startup.

So I figured I would log back into Ello, for the first time in five months, and find out how it works these days.

Well — there were indeed some new features to try.

I managed to embed a video from YouTube, and then I got it to play. That was fun. I succeeded in triggering a few new keyboard shortcuts, like “F” for my Friends page, and “R” to view my notifications. I drag-and-dropped friends’ avatars into the Omnibar — the box at the top that you use to post text — and saw their Ello handles appear. Cool.

Read More