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Why Mastodon? (reddthat.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Elden_Potato@reddthat.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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After joining lemmy I decided to check out what else the "fediverse" has to offer which naturally led me to Mastodon which is actually pretty neat. However.....I can't help but wonder why in the world the name Mastodon was chosen? I guess I can buy some kind of meaning behind it and if so, fair enough. But... I still can't ignore that it feels like the naming equivalent of soggy cold toast and generates about as much excitement. I just feel like a name bit less....lame? would help a lot to generate buzz and hasten culture adoption of it. No idea what that name would be, just throwing it out there. Happy to be enlightened if this is an unpopular opinion.

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[–] meejle@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In-sta-gram

Although I'm only saying that to be contrarian, I do actually agree with you 😬

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

A-ma-zon

[–] fernandofig@reddthat.com 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My point was more about pronunciation, not necessarily a hard count of syllables (which would be just an easier guideline). Your example and "Amazon" are kinda the exceptions that proves the rule. 🙂

[–] Blaze@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Playstation, Nintendo, Photoshop, Nvidia? Sorry to pick on you, just made me question how many I could find 😄

[–] fernandofig@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, but then we're not talking about social media anymore, but brand and company names in general.

When you want a brand name to be part of people's everyday vocabulary, as is the case with social media, it needs to be succint and easily referred to. Hell, sometimes people even turn those names into verbs (tweeeting, facebooking, etc.), how do you do that with Mastodon without compounding the problem? (E: I know about "toots", but now that's coming up with unintuitive jargon for the platform - which is fine, but shouldn't have been necessary in the first place if more thought had been put into the brand)