So there’s this new beta test social network called Ello that’s making some waves. It’s even being promoted all over Facebook. How big is the buzz? Despite the fact that you need an invite from an already registered member to join, Ello’s server got overloaded because of all the incoming traffic.

Ello is trying to create a new kind of social media site, as it wants to run itself via volunteers and donations in order to avoid advertising altogether. It also wants to keep it simple. Its interface is so simple that many people aren’t sure how to use it.

But the attraction of Ello has very little to do with Ello itself. The reason why this new social media site is generating so much buzz is because people are feeling very disaffected by Facebook.

Facebook is like that relationship you just can’t get out of: It was fun at first, and now it’s kinda meh, but it hasn’t gotten bad enough that you feel it’s necessary to break up alotgether, especially since you’re so used to it and rely on it so much. You would break up, but then you would lose all those friends and all those rides to work in Facebook’s nice new car, along with its cooking, even though the sex has gotten really boring.

So when a new social media face comes along people get interested. VERY interested! The relationship is bad enough that you’re really looking for a way out, and a new relationship might be a way to escape.

There are things about Facebook that are good: They haven’t resorted to blanket pop-up ads that blot out the screen until you click around it. They make it very easy for other sites to interact with their site. And it’s ubiquitous. So many people use it you can almost assume anyone you’re talking to has an account. And for many reasons that’s a good thing. You can keep in touch with a myriad of people with just a quick and simple status update.

But much of what Facebook does has many people looking for the next big thing, so much so they’re ready to pounce on it and throw Facebook onto the virtual dust bin of internet history along with Friendster and MySpace, two mighty social media sites that are now just tragically pathetic whispers of their once mighty selves.

So Facebook, (I’m talking to Facebook now,) this should be your wakeup call. If the beckoning gaze of an over-simplified site is making people giddy at the prospect of ditching you for an alternative, that should raise alarm bells. You want to keep your mighty social media stance? Do you want to save this marriage? Then here’s what you do:

– Stop filtering the feed. We don’t care what your fancy schmancy algorithm thinks of us and what it perceives as our personal preferences. We want to see it all! I kept liking pages out of the mistaken concept that many weren’t posting, and then I found out FB was just filtering most of my pages away. (Click “Page Feed” on the FB sidebar and you’ll see what I mean.) Let us see what we want to see, and that’s an UNFILTERED Facebook feed!

– Let people use aliases. The neurotic insistence that we all have to use our very real names is preposterous. The internet was built on usernames anyways. And your policing system is out of whack. There are many alias profiles that go undetected, while others are targeted, deleted, and persecuted, all because of a willy-nilly policing system. And there are so many reasons why you should allow alias names and identities on Facebook.

– Make your interface more flexible. Isn’t it time you let users choose amongst different interfaces and interface options so we’re not all stuck with the one interface you give us? And how about giving us notifications when someone unfriends us? That’s something people have been clamoring for! And then there’s the little things, like letting us upload animated gifs that actually animate on your pages.

– Change your culture in general. Hire some older engineers. Stop being so skittish (and random) with your censorship by losing your poop over breastfeeding photos or minor nip slips. Give people more choices in how they see and use Facebook.

To be honest, I don’t see Ello really going anywhere. I think it may just very well be a flash in the pan. But you can bet that there are others who are trying to get in on the social media bandwagon, and you know they’re all salivating at the prospect of unseating Facebook as the new King of the Hill. And if you want to delete aliased profiles and keep hiring young doofuses just out of college and endlessly filtering our feeds, then everyone’s going to keep looking out of the corner of their eye for a new place to go. And if someone hits it right, the thriving mass of Facebookers will jump from you like rats from a sinking ship.

And then you can go to that basement dive, and get a cheap bottle of rum along with Friendster and MySpace, and the standups will use that joke, “I still use a Facebook account!” (Wild laughs from audience.)

Or, you can change, just enough to make us love you again. It’s your call.