<story><title>Riot is now Element</title><url>https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>badrabbit</author><text>No!!! Of all the names in the world why this. &amp;quot;Hey bro, let&amp;#x27;s chat on Element&amp;quot; ,not quite a ring to it.&lt;p&gt;The hardest problem in computer science strikes again!&lt;p&gt;Matrix,Riot and Libolm are epic projects, I wish them all the success but man, even Riot was a hard sell as a brand. I would seriously be dissapointed if it loses popularity over this. I don&amp;#x27;t think the project maintainers understand that their core users&amp;#x2F;fans are waiting for a product they can sell to friends,family and coworkers.&lt;p&gt;People who don&amp;#x27;t know tech rely on branding&amp;#x2F;brand reputation and word of mouth reputation to decide if they are intetested in even trying out a product to begin with.&lt;p&gt;Which of these is unlike the others?&lt;p&gt;1) Signal&lt;p&gt;2) Telegram&lt;p&gt;3) Element&lt;p&gt;4) Whatsapp&lt;p&gt;Hint: The theme is messaging and communication.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Al-Khwarizmi</author><text>Whatsapp can be an extremely confusing name for non-native English speakers. I&amp;#x27;m from Spain and I think 90% of the time I see it written in Spain, it&amp;#x27;s written wrong (wassap, whasapp, wuatsapp, whatsap, watsap, wuassap, wuassapp, whatsup, watsup, etc.). Sometimes a phonetically &amp;quot;transliterated&amp;quot; version is used instead, like &amp;quot;guasap&amp;quot;, which I find more tolerable because at least then it becomes a genuine Spanish word, rather than a botched attempt at writing an English word.&lt;p&gt;Also, many people don&amp;#x27;t get the meaning&amp;#x2F;pun in the name at all (which probably is one of the reasons for writing it wrong). Even to me, with a good English level, it wasn&amp;#x27;t immediate because &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s up&amp;quot; is a very idiomatic greeting and not one that non-natives (or at least, Spanish people) tend to use in a natural way. It took some time to click in my mind.&lt;p&gt;That said, Whatsapp absolutely dominates chat apps in Spain... so I guess these issues are not that important after all. Or at least, not if you are at the right place at the right time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Riot is now Element</title><url>https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>badrabbit</author><text>No!!! Of all the names in the world why this. &amp;quot;Hey bro, let&amp;#x27;s chat on Element&amp;quot; ,not quite a ring to it.&lt;p&gt;The hardest problem in computer science strikes again!&lt;p&gt;Matrix,Riot and Libolm are epic projects, I wish them all the success but man, even Riot was a hard sell as a brand. I would seriously be dissapointed if it loses popularity over this. I don&amp;#x27;t think the project maintainers understand that their core users&amp;#x2F;fans are waiting for a product they can sell to friends,family and coworkers.&lt;p&gt;People who don&amp;#x27;t know tech rely on branding&amp;#x2F;brand reputation and word of mouth reputation to decide if they are intetested in even trying out a product to begin with.&lt;p&gt;Which of these is unlike the others?&lt;p&gt;1) Signal&lt;p&gt;2) Telegram&lt;p&gt;3) Element&lt;p&gt;4) Whatsapp&lt;p&gt;Hint: The theme is messaging and communication.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simias</author><text>I actually don&amp;#x27;t like &amp;quot;Signal&amp;quot; either, because it&amp;#x27;s such a common word that it makes it hard to search for it online. &amp;quot;Telegram&amp;quot; is marginally better, since original telegrams are not very relevant today.&lt;p&gt;But yeah Element is arguably even worse, it&amp;#x27;s a super common noun &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem to have anything to do with communication.&lt;p&gt;But in the end these naming discussions are always going to end up as bikeshedding. If the tech is good it&amp;#x27;ll probably manage to be successful despite its mediocre name.</text></comment>