As someone who tried out Diaspora, App.net, and Ello I am hopeful. But, I am also wary. I hope that this place can be different. Each of those started out great, but had their eventual problems. The open source nature of Mastodon does give me hope.
@daveskull81 me too, Ello was fund for a few weeks. Haven't been back in ages. But it's clear something has to happen with twitter and this type of open source, distributed funding approach seems good. I hadn't heard of GNU social before, so i'll have to check that out. Damn 400 characters is a lot.....
@rateldajer Agreed. Ello was interesting at first and I thought it would be a fun place. But, it turned into a very un-fun place for me very quickly. I haven't been back in quite some time and I don't plan on going back. Yes, 500 characters is quite a bit indeed!
@rateldajer Ello eventually felt like the "cool" kids table in the cafeteria except there was nowhere else to go to. There was this weird elitism to me that left a bad taste with me. I just couldn't stand the place eventually.
@daveskull81 I felt like if I wasn't an artist photographer Ello wasn't for me. and also not enough friends were on it and it was hard to find people, it was about pictures more than words from my impression.