Remember Ello? Just a few short months ago this hyped new social network had people scrambling to register usernames. But these days, it's an afterthought, or worse, a punchline about how quickly new services arrive and burn out online. Ello is trying to change that damning perception with its awaited free iOS app, which lets you access your Ello account on your iPhone or iPad. Ello has also updated some of its overall features to tie in with the launch of the app. Ello's app has you the tools you want for browsing a social network, but the Ello community itself is so lifeless, all you're left with is a free ticket to a ghost town.

Features

To use Ello on your iOS device, like the iPhone 6 I used for testing, you'll need to set up an Ello account. Previously, the service was invite-only, but now everyone can join. The first tab on the bottom row of icons, Discover, lets you add friends by entering their email addresses. Ello frequently sends out welcoming, if desperate, emails of its own, but your friends are much more likely to join if they know someone who's actually using the service. The Discover tab also highlights interesting content from other Ello users, but like the now-deceased Twitter Discovery tab that this feature is clearly modeled after, the overview it provides is too shallow to be that useful.

Next, you'll find the Notifications tab, which lets you know when and how people interact with you. In Ello, you follow other users, again like Twitter, but from there you have a few more options for how your news is displayed. At the top of the next tab, the news feed, you'll find two boxes: "Friends" and "Noise." The Friends feed displays full-size views of each piece of content for you to fully dig into. It's meant to be a curated space you reserve for the sources you really care about. The Noise feed is a more densely packed view for skimming through lots of content at once from everyone you follow. You can move contacts between Friends and Noise at a time, and they'll never know which section they are in, so you don't have to worry about offending anybody.