I never thought the problem was the product, rather it is the management and the community. What's valuable about hacker news is the people who are involved, and what's great about Quora are the people who give a response.
It's not helpful that most people spam useless tweets constantly. It took a while, but I finally set my twitter to follow news updates perfectly.
It's a delicate mix of both. Ello caused a mass migration away from Facebook but new users had difficulty understanding the Ello UI, and eventually after the hype simmered, people generally stuck with Facebook as their main network interface.
There was also much talk around the time Whatsapp was acquired by Facebook.. people were eager to find alternatives and could easily migrate.
I can't imagine Twitter being around in 5 years. IMO the best aspect Twitter has right now above all other services is it's realtime tag/search/trend system. The 140 char limit is antiquated, the userbase is mostly twitter joke addicts and an unceasing torrent of self promotional noise.
I'm still sorta hoping Ello get's their shit together. I'd gladly pay for their service instead of being immersed in AOL 2015.
Maybe it was different for your social circle(s)..?
Many of my friends were active on Ello for a few weeks. It catered mostly to original content producers and artists, so most normal people who simply want to repost news articles and music videos were deterred from being tossed into the "noise" category.
