Update: I checked it out again. It's improved a tiny bit, but still isn't good UI design at all. All those tiny icons that expand with a mouse hover - annoying and not accessible. I still can't easily find several things I can easily do on Facebook (despite Facebook's terrible UI and menu options). Not usable for someone used to Facebook or Google+. ~~~~~

Actually, for the life of me, I struggle anytime I login to Ello and have to hunt for how to logout. The half page banner (some translucent stuff to scroll through) of whatever on top doesn't make things easier to know about either. The whole UI is completely unintuitive, quite bland and too minimalistic to figure things out. So I stopped checking it several months ago. The privacy part is very nice and very welcome, because of which I had a lot of hope on the platform. But Ello was (or probably still is) nowhere close to Facebook or Google+ in terms of UI and usability. Try pushing a novice user from either of the big platforms into Ello and watch the person struggle. One's social graph being in some other walled garden is just one piece of the problem in trying to move users to something else. But that something else needs to be an intuitive and viable alternative in the first place.

P.S.: I'm not a tech newbie.

P.P.S.: I try to push people I know to better (if not the best) platforms and services when it comes to privacy.