this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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Stop naming Fedi software with shitty names, you'll have more people.
And yet the dumbest name of all, the gold medalist of low-IQ nomenclature itself (Whatsapp) is literally more popular than telephones.
Have to disagree, WhatsApp is a great name, maybe the best named app of this entire generation of software.
For me it oozes cringey 2010-era hype about this newfangled buzzword "app", which also doesn't even rhyme with "up" except to the obviously non-native developers who clearly thought it did. Etc. We will agree to disagree!
Ah but even coming from a native speaker, it just flows so smoothly and feels just like saying what is arguably now the most common greeting said in English. To me it's like the word "app" is hiding itself right in the most natural greeting, the greeting also being a symbolic distillation of the app's purpose - there's an elegant, simple symmetry to it in my ears, the opposite of buzzword cringe!
But hey, opinions and assholes eh? Taste is so subjective lol. Just glad they didn't name it iWhatsApp, then we'd agree and be big mad
I agree that it is an exceptional software, perhaps the best of the Fediverse, but it has a terrible name. The reason for this name was to mark a continuity with the first potentially federated social network, namely "identi.ca"
Moreover, despite the name, it is not a really friendly software, but presents several ergonomic complexities. Finally, I add that when I pronounce it with my dictation system, it is always transliterated as "free handicap", which is a very inclusive thing, but every time I have to correct it... 🤣
This is also why I decided to call my instance with a different name such as Poliverso, Too bad that a few months later Zuckerberg decided to launch his failed Metaverso project, which is why every time I have to explain that I did not call it that to parody the Metaverso 🤬
The only reason Facebook doesn't sound dumb is that we've been saying it for like 15 years
I believe Facebook’s name came from an actual thing. The company was created for college students. Many campuses, would give face books that had students and professors from the universities.
Nah, it's a good name, has a nice ring to it and if two syllables. Friendica is hard to pronounce and sounds awkward.
"Instagram" is, at least in my opinion, about as awkward as "Friendica" to say, and has millions of users. It wins marginally on spelling, but how often does the average user write or type the full name of a site anyway?
Instagram.
I thin some nerd just wanted everyone that uses it to say "dick."
Friendica was the fediverse, before there was a fediverse... And it was no different from other names of the era, like Sym.pati.co... DiGG, Reddit, etc etc.
All of those just sound easier to pronounce, even though "sympatico" is kinda longer than necessary. My point is that almost all the Fediverse software has awkward to pronounce names which doesn't really help with the initial adoption.
Someone mentioned a name to designate words with two syllables as a good way to name products (Twitter, Apple, Google, Netflix), but I can't find it back.
I mean, it is what it is... The name is over a decade old, and was likely selected because it sounded "technical". Friendica came about only a couple of years after facebook opened up for the wider public.
Yeah lemmy is already a dumb enough name.
😈
Oh look, the pope of names has spoken!