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.