Ello needs to remind me to come back

Ello is blowing up right now. Everyone in my facebook feed is posting their ello name or asking for an invite. The tech news crowd is debating the merits of look and feel design vs form and function. Startups are rethinking their arguments of mobile first and advertising as the primary revenue. Maybe ello will replace facebook or maybe it will drown in the overcrowded social media deadpool due to lack of funds. I’m not a heavy social media user so I don’t have a strong opinion either way.
One thing I know is that ello needs a native mobile app and they need one today. Half of facebook’s daily users are mobile only. That is what drives the conversation, creates engagement and keeps everyone else checking their feed. If we have to check our status on the desktop, it will slow the conversation to a crawl. The ello argument for not having an app is that they have a crisp, clean UI and they aren’t ready to put resources into a mobile app. That makes sense, but I don’t think they have the time if they really want to spark the facebook rebellion we are all waiting for.
If you think about why mobile apps work so well at getting people engaged, its easy to understand what ello is really missing. Push notifications. I don’t think the facebook app is any better than the desktop experience. There are pros and cons for each but overall I don’t really prefer one to the other. But I have the app so I know when something happens. I check twitter when something is happening because twitter reminds me to. Notifications would boost my response time from once a day to about 5 minutes. That is what drives the conversation and active engagement is what keeps people coming back. If I posted this on ello instead of twitter, the conversation would take place over days instead of an hour.
Don’t get me wrong, the app should just bring up the mobile website. No need to put in weeks of development time. No need to make a perfect UI or a limited, stripped down UX. Just notifications and a link to the website. As an added bonus, this would also fixed one of ello’s other big problems. It’s hard to find my friends unless I send them emails (seriously? email?). An app would let them access my contact list and tell me who has already joined.
This simple app could be done in a week and help keep people engaged after they sign up. It would help me figure out which of my friends who are actively using the service and I could easily identify my friends who haven’t joined yet. Plus, Ello doesn’t need to sacrifice their design principles. It’s an easy win.
-Jim