While I understand the change, it was definitely awkward timing given that I was championing a transition to Matrix. I've been encouraging my coworkers to download the client, and next thing I know the website has completely changed and they've removed the link to download the desktop client.
We're just doing the desktop builds of Element now - you can grab the last release at https://riot.im/download/desktop, but the download link should be fixed shortly.
We know that the name change will be disruptive in the short term and even tried to address this point in the blog specifically for people like yourself trying to fly the flag.
Further down the line we hope that rebranding will make such efforts easier since folks will not need to navigate Matrix vs Riot vs Modular vs New Vector maze (in addition to all the other excellent clients and hosting services out there).
We tried to trademark Element and another generic abbreviation as a combined name and even that was not possible. The german trademark bureau just sent us printed wikipedia articles of both words as "proof" that it's not possible.
Great name I'd say! If I would consider converting people like my parents to a new app, I'm sure Element has a bigger chance than Riot because of the connotations with the name of the latter.
People often get confused, they think the word is strong (Nike,Google,...) while the word nearly never is. As you've said it's the other way around, what the company evokes in us with their product over time is brought back to the name.
It means that a unique, made-up word is fine because it will gain meaning. It may sound strange now because it is new and unknown but that does not matter because that will change. 'Google' went to a strange, made-up word, to being an everyday noun and verb.
In that respect a made-up word is the best option because you start with a blank slate and you can create its meaning.
Whereas a generic word already has meaning, several competing ones, even, and you have to struggle against that to build your brand, so it's an inferior choice.
Ironically Riot.im is the 4th hit for me on an incognito VPN'd browser for the word Riot. So I hope that Element will end up with the same visibility :)
Agreed. Catchy names also have 1 to 2 syllables, usually, so Element seems a bit unwieldy. But maybe they want to step back a bit and give the Matrix brand a boost.
I am always surprised when I see projects choosing such general names. This will make SEO and name recognition so much harder. Not adopting such generic names should be elemental wisdom. Guess now at least they are always in their element though. /s
I'm not sure what it is with companies just picking a name from the English dictionary. You could be a little more inventive and come up with something either foreign or new-ish. Even a wrong but witty spelling of an existing word would do, but things like Apple, Amazon, Slack, Bird, Riot, Glassdoor... come on.
Not to take away from the tremendous work they're doing but that name really isn't good.
Agreed. Generic names are difficult to find help on, especially in the software world. Like that modelling tool which was mentioned a while back - "Hash". Imagine googling for "Hash syntax error".
What's next, an ITIL-enabled accounting system called 'IT'?
Yeah - it is a pain trying to search for technical support for overloaded terms. Matrix is an especially bad one given the mathematical terms. I think Riot was a terrible choice for a messenger name, especially for an encrypted one (doing the work of politicians to demonize it for them) but it would still be easier to search for because preciously there weren't IT questions about riots.
> We’re obviously aware that Element is (once again) both a dictionary word and a mathematical term - but in practice, looking at search results for Element right now, the top hits are for dictionary sites(!) and the field is wide open.
I tried searching for Element in the Google Play store. It suggests an app dedicated to Asian gay men. The website directs to Riot.im.
From the article:
> RiotX (our ground-up rewrite of Riot Android) has exited beta, and replaces Riot Android as Element
RiotX I can find/see, but it shows as a beta. It's not called Element.
I guess it's a slow rollout?
I used Riot ages ago, it was the suggested solution to have IRC on mobile. It wasn't that reliable plus it was crazy slow (search . They now suggest Rocket chat, it isn't slow but it doesn't do IRC. So now the community is divided across loads of platforms. There's also some web based things, e.g. Discourse, some still use mailing lists, etc. Plus things like Gitlab. It used to be much easier to follow things ("lurk").
Bravo i have to say. Riot was a really good name for a project in the post NSA/Snowden time, but since we already forgot that, Element is much more Acceptable for the big wash ;)
That's been long overdue and will hopefully help Matrix make inroads into more conservative organizations; I believe the tech is really promising. It's a definite liability, trying to introduce people to Matrix, when the de-facto default client's name evokes all kinds of unhelpful associations – it doesn't sound like work at all and it does sound like gamers, toys, apparently even like a far-left political organisation. Element should be fine for everyone.
Glad you like it, the original idea was to think of Riot in terms of a 'Riot of Colour', though in practice it can be interpreted in lots of different ways.
We think Element has much broader appeal and really like the association with being the smallest indivisible unit.
American here. It's not just a British thing, but it's definitely not a very common use of the word.
I think "riot of color," however, is just one instance of a particular, positive use of the word "riot." More broadly, "riot" can mean something like "a really fun thing" (as in "Let's hang out with that guy, he's a riot!"). But I'm not surprised that Element/Riot found that this was not the primary association that folks were making.
In the previous post comments there was an interesting debate on the etymology of the word riot. It's a French borrow in the Middle English era, so its etymology is at best "complicated". The "riot of color" idiom was one of the first written usages in English indeed predating the use of the term for violence, but the French word was "debate/quarrel" so it's hard to rule out that violence or negative connotations weren't always hand in hand in the metaphor underlying "riot of color".
Even if these "toys" were instrumental in driving technological progress, it makes sense to rename it for "conservative" organisations. Some say the smarter ones should give in, so just make it easy to swallow.
Although I don't see widespread adoption yet if Matrix bridges aren't implemented by the common household names. Conservative organisations use solutions from Apple or Microsoft. There is no deeper thought behind it.
That said, I think they just did it because of trademark issues. Private users are probably converted by their environment and probably don't think too much about the name.
Worth pointing out that some of the largest proponents of Matrix today are governments and civic institutions. The federated nature and ability to self host are really important to them.
More recently the German Education authority has announced that it will roll out a 500K user installation - this is the world’s largest-ever single contract for a collaborative software service (https://sifted.eu/articles/element-germany-deal/)
If I'm an organisation, e.g. a company, I don't want end-to-end encryption, I want to make sure I have access to all messages within the company and between employees.
So I'm not sure a tool that is encrypted end-to-end will be that appealing to me not matter the name unless there is a feature around that.
On the other hand, individuals who are savvy enough to look for such a tool may not worry too much about the name.
Element is end to end encrypted by default for private rooms and 1:1 chats, but the Matrix protocol does not mandate the use of end to end encryption since it doesn't make sense for some use cases, particularly for public world readable rooms and IoT application.
Good to know that it can be used without e2e encryption.
I don't see e2e as a plus point in a corporate environment because there is always a need to retrieve communications in some cases (which has nothing to do with UX).
Since you run the matrix server in that environment you can add a hook for a master corporate account to be auto included in every room made. It would then be privy to any encryption keys.
I thought so too (not a native English speaker, had never seen that word before) until I read a quote from Linus saying that he likes to name his projects after himself.
I've always wondered about that one too. I mean naming is a minefield, but using a name that's well known to be at least mildly offensive in a particular dialect of English is probably something I would have chosen to avoid. I suppose at least they didn't call it "prck", "twt", or "cnt". One has to be grateful for small mercies.
From what I recall it was intentional on part of the early git team. They did want to make it clear it was a "dumb" VCS compared to work going on in some of the smarter ones such as darcs. git has always had something of the Unix "worse is better" philosophy at its core, and it is amusing it chose to wear that so much on its sleeve that it took that as a name.
I think you'd get different answers from different people but you can really put your back into the UK pronunciation of "twat" to make it sound really venomous, as opposed to the much more innocuous "twot" pronunciation of the US. That tends to make it more offensive. "Git" just doesn't have quite the same impact.
Git is a term of insult with origins in English denoting an unpleasant, silly, incompetent, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person. As a mild oath it is roughly on a par with prat and marginally less pejorative than berk.
One of the best pranks I've seen is people getting endorsed for git on LinkedIn, from coworkers who don't think quite so high of them as pretended during office hours.
I can vouch that I avoided deploying it in corp environments due to the questionable name. "Element" is fine and is generic just like "Matrix". So name really does matter (specially in formal/corporate environments).
Your comment doesn't mean much if your company is on Slack. The "Slack" name can present issues for other people just like "Riot" has presented for you.
This comment section is remarkable. If the name change is perceived to be in order to be welcoming to corporate, nobody has a problem with that. Imagine if the name change was perceived to be in order to be more welcoming to underrepresented people. We would have endless discussions about pc culture, and how the name is not bad at all, etc...
Speaking of names, I'm upset that the username I go by is taken. I'm echelon @ { gmail, HN, Twitter, Github, Gitlab, Square Cash, etc }, but found Riot / Matrix just a few months too late to get my username.
I'm not satisfied with the "just stand up your own server" response as an alternative.
I know it's cutting off my nose, but I've avoided using it because of this. I'm OCD about stupid usernames.
I made up a name for an RPG character, and then started using it across the internet.
Then I found out that someone else had already made the name a few years before me and was already doing that.
Even unique names that aren't at all dictionary words are at risk of collision. I think the smarter tactic is to accept that you won't get that same nickname everywhere, and just have a few alternatives that you'll use if necessary. Complaining to the masses that a name is already taken isn't going to work.
Brandon, why do you make it trivial to find your identity and trace your activities all across the internet?
Consider using a different name everywhere for improved privacy.
I don't get why you are getting so many downvotes - perhaps offtopic?
Anyway: the lesson is that unless you own the top-level domain, you should never think of "your" name. Otherwise you are just getting different leases from different properties.
Do you want to be echelon? Register the domain (ideally on ENS, so that no government can take it away from you), adopt federated/decentralized services and push for adoption of OpenID/WebAuth.
I like what people are doing with Riot/Element/Matrix but it's still a bit janky. Half the chats I join are filled with messages about missing session keys.
It will be impossible to find on Google.
Also, I'm wondering if it a good choice for such a project to use the hipster '.io' domain regarding the risk in a near future with this domain name.
In addition with management issue, the biggest issue/risk with .io is related to the fact the domain might have to come back Mauritius in a short term/few years as UK ownership of the related islands are unlawful:
http://domainincite.com/24236-future-of-io-domains-has-becom...
While a name change was a sensible move, I had very high hopes for them to choose a saner non-technical one with a more user-friendly focus, but this name sounds very generic and is more cryptic that "Signal".
They now have to do some serious SEO to be the first result on a Google search of "Element".
Sorry you don't like the name, hopefully it will grow on you.
On SEO, quoting from the post itself
"We’re obviously aware that Element is (once again) both a dictionary word and a mathematical term - but in practice, looking at search results for Element right now, the top hits are for dictionary sites(!) and the field is wide open. Conversely, in a virgin browser on VPN, Riot is the 4th hit on Google for Riot; second only to a certain games company. In other words, we’ve shown that we can successfully adopt dictionary words - and if you do find yourself lost searching in a maze of mathematics, just throw in the word ‘chat’ to get back on track."
So yes there is a big SEO job ahead of us, we don't take anything for granted, but see a viable path to getting a good ranking.
Maybe your Google-Bubble is just broken? For me searching for Element brings up mostly companies and products which are using this name. Just a low number of results are dictionaries and knowledge-sites. Good luck competing with all of them.
Your first sentence makes no sense, given in the comment right above you (which is quoting the article) it points out that it was with a cookie-less browser and a VPN. You're far more likely to be the one who's bubbled in differently than your average person.
I just think Element14. I agree with you, it is so generic as to be meaningless. Signal makes sense. iMessage & Facetime do what they say. Whatsapp at least sounds like a fun app even if the name is meaningless.
Except they were originally "Apple Computers" until they slowly gained enough recognition to rebrand to "Apple," plus that was in 1984, there wasn't an oversatuated market of other computer brands also called "Apple," unlike "Element" which has tons of existing tech-related and non–tech-related overlap and is generic on top of it.
Press release pro tip: sidle in what the company or app does very early in. Verging on all of the releases I read on HN don't do this but are for companies I've not heard of. So you leave knowing almost nothing about the company
That's a good point. I've noticed larger enterprises doing this with their pr's, which has always struck me as bit silly when it is a house hold name (Oracle, Canonical, VMWare etc) but ofc not everyone would know them. But for smaller vendors this becomes even more important.
Yes indeed its pretty universal for PLCs to do it.
Some examples to demonstrate
[1] ...LexisNexis® CounselLink®, a leading cloud-based enterprise legal management solution for corporate law departments, today announced the release...
[2] ...RecVue, Inc., the fastest growing next generation order-to-cash automation platform, today announced...
oops, excellent point. I've added "For those discovering us for the first time: Element is the flagship secure collaboration app for the decentralised Matrix communication network." as the 2nd main para.
On mobile (galaxy S5, Firefox), the first and last letters of the text in the header image at https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/ are cut off, so I just see "wm your conversation".
This is one thing I always loved about The Economist - it didn't matter how obvious an entity might seem, they would always qualify what it is when mentioned in an article, never presuming upon their readers' knowledge, eg. "...Google, an internet search engine, ..."
Discord wants to attract communities beyond games (e.g. python developers). Their name means a disagreement between people. I think they will aim for a name more like "Discourse".
I think they'd have to change more than their name. The entire nomenclature of their app is gaming focused. That would also expose them to great risk of losing their core user base, at a time when another company Guilded has just launched a strictly gaming-focused chat app.
They've started to make changes, like changing their TLD from .gg to .com, and they removed the game store. They had a popup after a recent update describing the changes and why their doing it (to appeal to more than just gamers). I think that other than those bits of branding, it can be pretty gamer agnostic, though I haven't used it in a workplace to actually catch the inconsistencies.
Slack and Discord are respectively references to the Church of the Subgenius and Discordianism. Obviously Riot/Matrix should have gone with something Flying Spaghetti Monster-related, maybe even working in how word "matrix" refers to the connection to a womb.
I don't care about SEO, but as an infrequent user I always liked that Riot was a snappy, two syllable, memorable name (I never forgot it). Synapse and Matrix are also easy for me to remember, I must add. I suspect I may forget Element--too close to a word I use every day (HTML elements, chemical elements, etc.) We'll see. Either way I expect I can get there by looking up "matrix client," of course.
I speak English, but I can’t follow what this means:
> In fact we have simplified all our naming: Element is also the name for New Vector (the company behind Riot) while Modular, our flagship Matrix hosting service, has become Element Matrix Services.
Is New Vector now names Element, too? Or is this some sort of nickname? A doing business as name?
No!!! Of all the names in the world why this. "Hey bro, let's chat on Element" ,not quite a ring to it.
The hardest problem in computer science strikes again!
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't think the project maintainers understand that their core users/fans are waiting for a product they can sell to friends,family and coworkers.
People who don't know tech rely on branding/brand reputation and word of mouth reputation to decide if they are intetested in even trying out a product to begin with.
Try googling "element", and then try googling "whatsapp". See the difference?
I get frustrated when brands, products, and even more so OSS software projects, choose names that have too many other meanings/brands associated with them because it can make it unnecessarily difficult to find relevant information using current search engine technology[0]. I've had situations where I've been clicking through pages and pages of results to find something relevant to what I'm looking for, even with more qualified searches.
You can critique WhatsApp for any number of reasons, if you're so inclined, but it's hard to argue that they didn't pick a good name. It's eminently searchable and doesn't spam results pages for unrelated/tangentially related topics.
[0] I find names like "Signal" irritating for the opposite reason. You're searching for information about the other meanings and yet much of what you get is brand "spam" results related to the messaging system. Great if that's what you're searching for, not if it isn't.
Well obviously it doesn't come up because they only just changed the name! In general Google is pretty good at returning the correct result for ambiguous searches. E.g. try searching for "Signal". Every result is about the signal app for me.
Google is generally good at returning correct results because they analyzed all users habits and can infer what one is looking for; it's up to the user to choose if it's worth the price to pay wrt privacy.
As for Signal, it's pretty normal for search engines, whether they spy on users or not, to return the app, since in their algorithms an explicit name (Signal) always wins over a generic name (a signal), which imo is how a search engine should work.
In due time, most searches for Element will eventually return the chat app. I'm not sure I will like the name by then though.
But the difference between Signal returning results for the messaging client and Element not returning results is just one of popularity and the fact that Element as a name is brand new. When signal was a nerdy thing used by few people it was not coming up highly in results either. Arguably Riot has more users than Signal did when it was called TextSecure, so Element is better placed to pick up as a name than Signal was.
Obviously Whatsapp had the advantage that its only competition in search results were typos and people mispelling whats up for comedic effect.
Try Googling Windows, Android, React, Java, Python, Ruby, Assembly, C(!)... it seems like things have worked out OK for all of them. IMO worries like this are overblown.
May I ask if you are a native english user and what country? Perhaps the branding works for EU markets?
Element has nothing to do with messaging. In my example,signal has something to do with communication(signaling),telegram is obvious, whatsapp is what you say when you talk to someone like 'hello'(what is up?). Element sounds like something I hear about in a chemistry class.
It also has to be catchy. At least Riot was catchy even if it made no sense. A brand name is not a mission stateme t, it's marketing material, full stop.
Yeah, I guess the polysyllable "hop on a Zoom call" has already entered the corporate lexicon, and "hop an an Element call" could just as easily displace it.
I’ll zoom you also sounds weird unless you know zoom is a telecommunication app, and it sounded weird until people started using it. “I’ll start an Element call with you” won’t sound weird after people start using it.
Also (as far as I know) the term "IRC" wasn't created as a product name intended to represent the protocol/service to potential customers. It was just an abbreviated descriptor of what it was.
I am a native speaker, and I've heard "a riot" used to describe "a good time", but in isolation I'd definitely also picture the violent protest type of riot.
That said, this doesn't appear to to be a common usage in the US. Webster doesn't have this usage, Wiktionary describes it as obselete and pairs it more with excess than I would, (also they use fifteenth century examples), though Oxford has it.
Conservatives invariably describe liberal demonstrations as "riots," in order to insinuate exactly the type of things you're describing. In response, liberals
1. View the term as something of a badge of honor
2. Have in fact grown more supportive of "vandalism" and "looting," using one's attitude towards them as a sort of litmus test of the value one places on the cause relative to property rights
If you want to sell to a left-aligned US business[^1], I think they'll view the term favorably.
[^1] For example, my wife is an aspiring design professional, and the consultancies in this space, including ones explicitly targeting conservative clients are overwhelmingly left-leaning.
I am a native speaker (UK) and concur. My grandmother would always threaten to "read us the riot act" if we were in real trouble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Act
Whatsapp has caught on to the point of utter market dominance in places where most people speak very little to no English. Without being aware of "what's up", there's no connection to communication at all. Still worked out well for them.
There's no connection between Amazon's brand and what they do, and yet Amazon Inc doesn't seem to suffer, and I don't think Apache Kafka is self-explanatory to just about anyone. Or Sprite (the beverage), and who really gets the name Pepsi? What meaning does Facebook have for anyone outside the US education system? I'm not from the US and I have only an extremely vague idea. No idea about the etymology of Ikea. Slack has actually been a tough sale in more conservative organisations before it got so hugely popular, probably in part because of the negative connotations the name carries – who wants to put their name underneath spending lots on a tool nobody knows, but that's named "Slack"? – and while I don't have a very large set of anecdata for this, I believe the same is true for Riot, maybe to a lesser degree because of the Matrix brand.
It's not catchy, I agree, more like – bland? I think that's fine, it doesn't have to beat Slack on controversial naming. Matrix could become absolutely huge by being adopted in large EU organizations and orgs elsewhere worried about exposing all their communication to the US, so being a bit bland is a feature, much like MS Teams, which must have people in charge of making the product as boring as possible, but it's making inroads into close to all large orgs over here that I'm aware of, and being deeply uncontroversial is certainly part of the reason why.
Plus, for catchiness, there's always Matrix, and I actually like the Element-of-a-Matrix jeux-des-mots.
Not easy, IKEA is an acronym. It represents the founder's first name, last name, home farm, and home village respectively (Ingvar, Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd).
Hey, you again! I wanted to reach you after the discussion about how you were willing to pay a premium for a service if using crypto was an option.
Now, giving that you also have issues with the name, May I interest you in Matrix/XMPP hosting provider that you can pay with crypto and invite your friends, called communick?
Hey, I remember seeing your reply, I didn't want to provide contact info on a public forum, and I have developed a severe allergy to email.
I am very intetested in paying for the product you linked, so long as I don't need email. I will support your product, even with imperfections so long as you remain attentive to your user's needs (hopefully being a paid product helps in that area)
And for anyone else reading, I became an instant fan of matrix/riot/element because the only thing I needed to sign up to the matrix.org home server was username,password and pass a captcha! No email! Same with HN(minus captcha). If this wasn't but a petty annoyance compared to all the real problems of the world, I would be protesting and holding flag burnings with RFC2822 on the flag! (We all have pet peeves :) )
In places like the European Union, it is illegal for example to provide subscription payments without notifying customers before payment renewal (which requires an email address).
Given that is a very complicated ordeal to do subscription payments with crypto (impossible with Bitcoin, requires transaction with custom contracts if you want to do with Ethereum), my initial implementation uses a basic pay-as-you-go account system. If you "subscribe" to my service, you need to ensure that you keep the balance positive otherwise your account gets disconnected on a failed charge.
No, you don't need email to signup or register. Just email/password.
You can invite other people to join the site, and yes, that is basically asking people to put an email address to notify your friends. I might implement later a referral/voucher system to make it easy to invite someone to join your paid contract without having to provide an email, but this is somewhat of a lower priority during the soft launch. Documentation and easier onboarding are definitely bigger tickets on my list.
rglullis, I'm also interested to pay you tons of money. sadly I will only pay for service powered by unicorn's farts and looks like your isn't. When do you think you can arrange that, I literally have my magical credit card in my hand?
I didn't see it as goal-post move, rather a reaffirmation of a previous conversation we had. He did say before that he does not want to provide email to sign up and that he wants to pay with crypto. Both these things were already on my roadmap.
ICQ has a quirky meaning to it,once you get it,it's like what you use when you seek someone (not really but the mental association is there). Slack? Not sure, it's popular in tech but I've only used it when I have no other choice but I associated it with slacking off (as in when you want to talk informally relax and talk non-work) or having slack (break or headroom),so when someone says let's chat on Slack, I think of a fun interaction that is more akin to taking a break.
But to your point, the only good thing about Skype for example is few syllables and messaging related graphics/logo for me.
Which is exactly the point of the name, isn't it? The name makes you think of leisure time, but in fact you are still working and discussing work-related things while using it.
I actually don't like "Signal" either, because it's such a common word that it makes it hard to search for it online. "Telegram" is marginally better, since original telegrams are not very relevant today.
But yeah Element is arguably even worse, it's a super common noun and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with communication.
But in the end these naming discussions are always going to end up as bikeshedding. If the tech is good it'll probably manage to be successful despite its mediocre name.
This name is not mediocre, it's sub par. It's not searchable, memorable on its own or memorable in relation to what it's for. You need at least one of those.
In the post they described searchability as one of the strenghts, as the top hits were dictionary link. They also said they're currently #4 for Riot, proving the viability of "dictionary names." As far as memorability, the whole Element in Matrix network is a little corny/convoluted to me, but oh well.
I was trying to address the point of the parent comment, that using common words is detrimental to searchability. I think that is true, but as shown by the examples I gave, it is not catastrophic and can be worked around.
I agree that these names are kind of meh, but they stand for things that will mostly be chosen on their technical merit, and that you don't have to sell to your friends/mom/gf/brother/etc; so it does not really matter.
Right, good point. It is a quality of uniqueness for searchability and marketability. On top of my head I can only think of a couple of counterexamples: Windows and Messenger, but your point is still very valid.
I guess in practice, for search purposes, we will see some kind of suffix attached to the name, Element Chat or similar.
Mint's default image viewer is called Pix. I tried looking up a crash/bug I was getting... it's basically impossible to search for.
I still don't know what some developers are thinking when they name things.
Not to ape your message but this, exactly. Element is much better than riot. Now if only I could find it in fdroid or GP.
Joke: I think I'm starting to see the hacker news version of the gell-mann amnesia effect, when you read something you have no opinion of, the hacker news people sound so smart, but when you read something, form your own opinion first, and then arrive at the HN comments to see everyone melting down, you wonder "where did all the smart people go?" 5 minutes later, you are back to being part of the concern mob. :)
I've worked for or had Element as a client a couple different times in my career. Each time, it was a different company. The name is rather elementary.
"Hey bro, let's chat on (the) Matrix." Use your favourite client.
People need to be able to find the Element app with a search of Matrix. So the Element Matrix client should work nicely.
Working with a company that used Element as part of it's brand name, it was remembered, but no one ever said the Element part.
I've seen first hand that people aren't crazy about installing an app on their phone called Riot. Hopefully the new name works.
Whatsapp can be an extremely confusing name for non-native English speakers. I'm from Spain and I think 90% of the time I see it written in Spain, it's written wrong (wassap, whasapp, wuatsapp, whatsap, watsap, wuassap, wuassapp, whatsup, watsup, etc.). Sometimes a phonetically "transliterated" version is used instead, like "guasap", 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.
Also, many people don't get the meaning/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't immediate because "what's up" 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.
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.
Tangential, but I would recommend considering "What's up?" to be the standard informal/low-register idiomatic greeting in American English. It's like "Ce faci?" in Romanian - indeed you'll sometimes get even native English speakers responding with "Good, and you?"
I second this, as an American. “What’s up”, “hey”, or “yo” (or some combination of the above like “yo, what’s up?”) are all extremely ubiquitous and way more common than more standard greetings like “hi” or “hello”, I
in my experience.
I'm actually not 100% sure now that I think about it, but I think what I do is figure out from the intonation/context whether it's intended as a generic greeting (in which case I'd repeat it back) or as an actual question (in which case I might respond with "oh, not much, what about you?" or similar).
"What's up" is actually a true invitation to tell the person recent events that have happened to you. If you don't want to give many details, possible responses are "Not much", "Same old, same old", "Nothing new", etc. You can also respond in the same way as you would to "How are you?", e.g. "Let's see, I'm doing good, trying to stay sane in Corona-times, but healthy!"
You should never just repeat "What's up" back without first answering the question. That is, it's OK to say "Not much, what's up with you?" but not just point black "What's up" in response.
I'd be cautious calling it a "true invitation"; it is true that someone who greets with "what's up" isn't going to be put off by a brief legitimate answer, but the greeter is likely not trying to introduce a conversation topic on your well-being, and may be caught off-guard if you launch into an extensive answer.
I would also caution against strongly saying that one should "never" fail to answer the question; in the US at least, it's such a common/generic expression that nobody is likely to be offended if you respond with "hey, how's it going?", or "hey, what's up?", or "what's up with you?".
The situation is similar to "howdy", which almost nobody outside the US south realizes is actually a question (short for "how are you doing?"). Sincerely answering "howdy" with e.g. "I'm fine, thanks" is a bit of a shibboleth that southerners can use to identify each other, but failure to do so is not any real faux pas.
For a phatic ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phatic_expression ) greeting like this, you're pretty much safe to respond with any other phatic greeting. These phrases just serve as verbal handshakes of acknowledgement, and don't need to be interpreted literally.
Wow, native English speaker and I didn't even get the pun until this comment. I thought it was a stupid play on "What app should we message each other on?" and thus kind of a silly name. But folks use it regardless.
Also a native English speaker, also had no idea it was supposed to be a pun until right now. I just thought it was another silly name from an Asian company.
Complete tangent, but, by any chance, when you read things, do you not 'hear' a voice in your head reading them?
Curious, because I'm pretty sure the first time I ran across Whatsapp it was in text, but I tend to 'hear' the things I read/write in my head, as though a voice read them to me. And because of that the pun stuck out. It might just be I'm more inclined to look for puns (playing games with them all the time with friends and family), but wondering if that might be part of it: if you just see the name and it's just a word, not something sounded out in your head, you of course would not notice the play on words.
Following on this train, as an fluent English speaker, millennial, Asian American that grew up in Texas public school all my life, and a lover of memes and puns...I also didn't realize WhatsApp was a pun...woah.
As a nonuser of WhatsApp, I don't care who owns it. Thinking the app comes from Asia is understandable; There's a large number of apps coming from Asia whose names sound nonsensical in the West (quite likely some of them have as much meaning as our own apps have, and are just foreign words or sounds). There's not many apps coming from Africa or South America these days (that I'm aware of), while Asia has quite a lot.
I don't even have to open the link to know that it's that budweiser ad. That's where my mind goes too when I think about the name of the app.
I think whatsapp has a nice ring to it, even if people doesn't know how to write it. Surely being able to write it on a store search is important, but not as important as sounding good.
-----
And does people get the name of Waze? It took me a while, because in this case not being a native English speaker is a real problem.
As a pedantic native English speaker, the name "WhatsApp" has always irritated me somehow. It's just not nice. There's an apostrophe missing, it's two words with intermediate capitalization and no space, "App" in the name of an app is redundant, the "pun" is a bit dumb (does it even really qualify as a pun?)...
But it's clearly worked out well for them, so I guess it's a good thing people like me weren't involved in their naming. shrug
> 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.
This was the case, but the market has changed. At the time, here in Spain Whatsapp was marketed as "like text, but free". We were still spending about 12 cents per SMS back then, or buying silly packages like "100 sms for 10 euro", so getting it was a no brainer. Anyone could have sold that idea.
Nowadays, however, whatsapp is so ubiquitous that I'm not even sure they can be replaced anytime soon, so if someone wants to undertake that task they better have all the help they can get.
It's a clever name. As an english speaker if some comms app out of spain named QuéPasapp that I wouldn't declare that it's name should be changed just because it's based on a spanish expression? I don't really see the problem. Until there's a universal language that everyone speaks this will happen over and over.
> If you're pissed about Element, you must be absolutely livid about Apple.
Nope. 'Apple Computer Inc.' already marketed themselves specifically first in 'computers' and that association was built over the years.
After they had success in products that weren't attached to only 'desktop/laptop computers' it made sense to remove 'Computer' from the name.
The same was done for Tesla Motors Inc. to Tesla Inc.
This is more like a full blown renaming of Riot, New Vector, Modular -> Element. You need to rebuild that SEO and previous associations from scratch again.
Sorry, you missed the point of my comment. I was addressing the original commenter's dislike of the specific name Element because of its generic nature.
And you're missing the point that "Apple" is a decades-old brand that everyone knows. It doesn't need to be explained to anyone now.
Element is a new chat app that people won't have heard of and thus does need to be explained, and the "Element" name isn't helping in that regard because it's extremely generic and has nothing to do with messaging. Even worse, it has bad name collision problems; I just Googled "element app" and all the results are other apps named Element, including one hosted at elementapp.com (which will seem like a more legitimate domain name to many casual users than element.io).
And for every one success story along the vein of Apple, there's hundreds of failure stories (caused by a variety of reasons). Having a good name gives you a better chance than having a bad name. You're just exhibiting survivorship/selection bias here.
And anyway, they were known as "Apple Computer" back then. See e.g. this ad: https://i.redd.it/f1o3uol6q2dx.jpg The name is not at all ambiguous. It was good branding relative to its competitors.
You might as well say the same argument about Snapchat Inc. who is now known as Snap. Even more generic than 'Apple' as it is used as a verb, adjective and now a company name which appears at the top of the Google search results despite the founders launching their company as Snapchat Inc.
From a SEO point of view, The transition of 'New Vector' -> 'Element' is just as bad since the continuity of the name is completely lost and has to compete again in the SEO rankings.
The thing is with very generic names in search engines and word of mouth, continuity is essential and the creators of Riot have to rebuild it again with a generic name.
I also missed it, I'd say it's not a good example. Apple is not a generic word, it's very specifically about fruit or tech which are concepts with little-to-no overlap. Element is a word that appears throughout life and technology with both specific and generic usages which will often closely relate, in a confusing way.
I didn't get that from the comment. Did we read the same comment?
> Apple
Now you're just comparing Apples to Elements. One is a general purpose device, and the other has a specific purpose, providing an opportunity to elude to that purpose through the name.
People talk a lot about apples, but AFAIK there's no other time the singular word "apple" comes up in the English language without an article, other than in reference to the company.
It fails the two syllable rule. All the best companies/bands/groups have two syllable names. If by chance a company succeeds without the two syllable name, a two syllable pseudonym will materialize.
How cooler than that can it be? I wouldn't be surprised if matrix-based apps get popular at first by using the protocol name, and only them using the app name as a differentiator.
"My niece installed me this app for chatting in the Matrix, what was it called? Ah yes, Element Matrix."
Toshiba, Mercedes, IBM, Microsoft, ycombinator, and my humble employer is Twilio. That is 10 seconds of names off the top of my head. I guess Mercedes is often shortened to Benz.
Do you actually say “MS?” I’ve only heard that as a prefix, like “MS DOS” or “MS Word,” but I’ve never heard someone say they work for “MS” or that “MS” makes Xbox. I’ve also never heard “Big Blue” nor “Toshi.” I have heard “HN,” so got me there.
I feel like you want us to answer the name of the most popular of the four messaging apps in the list, but telegram is the one named after a way of communicating.
Every time I see news about Riot I immediately think about Riot Games and League of Legends. I guess most people who don't know Element will assume Riot in the context of a messaging app is some client they have done to work alongside LoL. Riot Games is too big for anything else computer-related to manage to succeed, especially if males between 15 and 35 years are a significant part of their target customer base.
I don't even play LoL and I still think of Riot = Riot Games.
I'm willing to bet that was also a factor in their name change. In fact, a quick Google search for Riot brings up Riot games as the first result and the wikipedia entry for them appears on the side bar. So I'm guessing this was the case for the vast majority of Americans.
>This name change has been a long time in the making. As we explained when we announced the rebrand a few weeks ago, we’ve had major issues with a certain gigantic games company which has blocked us from being able to trademark Riot or even Riot.im - a huge issue when it comes to defending users against abusive forks of the app.
How does the name WhatsApp convey a theme of messaging and communication? Signal and Telegram are obvious.
It's worth noting that other services have equally nonsensical names. Skype, Slack. Others, like Line, have only a vague connection that take thinking about to see.
any plans to fix riot.imX beta on older android versions (5.X)? my friend can't even send messages (they are all just red) since some 0.9X version (not sure which exactly)
The post references their new website [0] and talks about RiotX, their new website [1] however links to Riot.im [2], not RiotX [3], what to get?
Also, I have to set a password, but also a recovery password which should not be the same... Yet, I store them together in my KeepassXC db. Why would that be? Oh, now I run into a message key, the third to store in the same db entry :)
One password that you send to the server to authenticate.
The other is a passphrase used to seed an encryption key for the data you store on the server securely in a manner the server has no access to.
After various HN threads about this company, and taking a tour on the element.io website, I'm still not sure what this is about to be honest.
I understand it's a chat app, but
- The pricing is really confusing (seems like the app is free, but having an account is paying ?).
- Is this a professional thing, like slack, or more of a whatsapp-like thing ? Trying to do both ? The whole differentation point seems to be based on the Matrix thing, but it's not really clear why is that important ? (I don't typically care about the backend of the app I use).
I mean, the front page says :
"All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and ads. Talk to everyone through the open global Matrix network, protected by proper end-to-end encryption."
So, the starter is what everyone says. "Safe from data mining and ads" is good, it makes me curious about what is the pricing then, and I wouldn't mind paying a cheap price for a correct messaging app. And then there's this Matrix bit, and I don't even know if it's good or bad. So I went to the pricing page (which doesn't exist, but there are "plans") and here, well the app is free, and I can get my account hosted either somewhere free, or either on the Element Matrix servers, where it should be safe from eavesdropping ? But with proper end to end encryption, it should be safe everywhere ? Or is the app by default not end to end encrypted, but hosting it somewhere makes it so ? It sounds really weird to be honest.
So really, good for you for renaming, but I don't think it's what will make me change (even though since whatsapp is facebook owned, I'm ready to migrate myself and my whole family on something else once the ads are there).
Matrix is a decentralised e2e-encrypted chat protocol (similar model to email) that you can self-host and is all free software. Encryption is between devices so the homeserver doesn't see the contents, but if you self-host then only the homeservers involved in the chat ever see your encrypted messages -- this is in contrast to centralised services like Signal where everything goes through one entity. You can create a free account on Matrix.org and it works perfectly fine.
But you're quite right that most users might not care about that (though a fair number of people care about having control over their data, which Matrix gives them since you can self-host a federated server).
Element is now an umbrella brand for several things:
* The most widely used cross-platform Matrix client (used to be called Riot and even further back was called Vector).
* A paid service where they will host a Matrix homeserver for you (used to be called Modular). This is what all of the pricing plans you saw are talking about. Unless you want to host your own server and don't want to manage it yourself, this isn't relevant for you.
* The legal entity which hired people to develop those things as well as contribute to Matrix (used to be called VectorLabs).
This isn't really that big of an announcement, Matrix has existed for at least 5 years now and I've been using it for a while. It's just that a common complaint (the scatter-brained branding) is being resolved by giving a single name to all of these parts (save Matrix -- the protocol -- which is keeping its name).
Matrix is the protocol, Element is a client to access Matrix which it does so via a matrix homeserver (which then federates across the rest of the Matrix).
So Element is free to use, but there are a range of servers to choose from. The matrix.org server is free to use, though as the largest single instance on the public federation is run on a best effort basis.
Alternatives are to either host your own server, or have someone else do that for you. The payment plans that you are looking at reference Element Matrix Services (EMS) which is a SaaS offering allowing you to spin up your own server to be used by whoever you choose to give access to (friends/colleagues etc). The advantages being that you get grater control of your data and improved performance.
Using email as an analogy
Matrix = Email
matrix.org / Matrix Hosted Services/ some other server = Fastmail/Gmail/Hotmail etc
Element = Thunderbird
It's not a marketed use case though, so I'm sure you could find places the app will still refer to itself as Riot (or now Element).
Alternatively the protocol is open so many third party clients exist: https://matrix.org/clients/ . Feature support in third party clients is pretty unevenly distributed though, E2EE in particular is supported in Riot and Seaglass, experimental in weechat-matrix and nheko, and absent in basically every other client.
Anybody who is questioning the need for the a name change in the first place should read up on the story of Piwik, Piwik Pro, and Matomo. Hostile forks are real, and they are fantastic messes.
374 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 329 ms ] threadI couldn't find it when I initially posted this.
While I understand the change, it was definitely awkward timing given that I was championing a transition to Matrix. I've been encouraging my coworkers to download the client, and next thing I know the website has completely changed and they've removed the link to download the desktop client.
HN: It'd be cool to fix the submission to link to the https://element.io/blog/welcome-to-element/ rather just element.io for more context :)
We know that the name change will be disruptive in the short term and even tried to address this point in the blog specifically for people like yourself trying to fly the flag.
Further down the line we hope that rebranding will make such efforts easier since folks will not need to navigate Matrix vs Riot vs Modular vs New Vector maze (in addition to all the other excellent clients and hosting services out there).
Edit: They have mentioned this in the blog. Please read that before downvoting.
(Really though, Slack is as generic of a word as Element! It just had a strong connotation now)
So are Zoom, Medium, Apple, Windows, Segment, etc. We just don't remember that sometimes, because the company has redefined the word.
It means that a unique, made-up word is fine because it will gain meaning. It may sound strange now because it is new and unknown but that does not matter because that will change. 'Google' went to a strange, made-up word, to being an everyday noun and verb.
In that respect a made-up word is the best option because you start with a blank slate and you can create its meaning.
Whereas a generic word already has meaning, several competing ones, even, and you have to struggle against that to build your brand, so it's an inferior choice.
Though as Apple, Nike, Windows, Slack, Segment have shown, the generic approach can work.
Eg, I just Googled element: "About 2,480,000,000 results (0.68 seconds)"
Not to take away from the tremendous work they're doing but that name really isn't good.
What's next, an ITIL-enabled accounting system called 'IT'?
> We’re obviously aware that Element is (once again) both a dictionary word and a mathematical term - but in practice, looking at search results for Element right now, the top hits are for dictionary sites(!) and the field is wide open.
From the article: > RiotX (our ground-up rewrite of Riot Android) has exited beta, and replaces Riot Android as Element
RiotX I can find/see, but it shows as a beta. It's not called Element.
I guess it's a slow rollout?
I used Riot ages ago, it was the suggested solution to have IRC on mobile. It wasn't that reliable plus it was crazy slow (search . They now suggest Rocket chat, it isn't slow but it doesn't do IRC. So now the community is divided across loads of platforms. There's also some web based things, e.g. Discourse, some still use mailing lists, etc. Plus things like Gitlab. It used to be much easier to follow things ("lurk").
Folks on iOS can pick it up here https://apps.apple.com/app/vector/id1083446067
Same for F-droid? I suppose I'll need to be testing the migration process again..
Starting out with a common word that already has close to a billion results on Google requires a lot more effort.
We think Element has much broader appeal and really like the association with being the smallest indivisible unit.
I think "riot of color," however, is just one instance of a particular, positive use of the word "riot." More broadly, "riot" can mean something like "a really fun thing" (as in "Let's hang out with that guy, he's a riot!"). But I'm not surprised that Element/Riot found that this was not the primary association that folks were making.
Still doesn't make any sense ...
Although I don't see widespread adoption yet if Matrix bridges aren't implemented by the common household names. Conservative organisations use solutions from Apple or Microsoft. There is no deeper thought behind it.
That said, I think they just did it because of trademark issues. Private users are probably converted by their environment and probably don't think too much about the name.
The French government's installation has been in the public domain for sometime (https://matrix.org/blog/2018/04/26/matrix-and-riot-confirmed...)
More recently the German Education authority has announced that it will roll out a 500K user installation - this is the world’s largest-ever single contract for a collaborative software service (https://sifted.eu/articles/element-germany-deal/)
It's important to everyone, whether they realize it or not.
So I'm not sure a tool that is encrypted end-to-end will be that appealing to me not matter the name unless there is a feature around that.
On the other hand, individuals who are savvy enough to look for such a tool may not worry too much about the name.
There are organisations today that use Element without e2ee, though in practice we find that most see e2ee as a plus point - especially with the recent UX improvements (https://element.io/blog/e2e-encryption-by-default-cross-sign...).
I don't see e2e as a plus point in a corporate environment because there is always a need to retrieve communications in some cases (which has nothing to do with UX).
Git is a term of insult with origins in English denoting an unpleasant, silly, incompetent, annoying, senile, elderly or childish person. As a mild oath it is roughly on a par with prat and marginally less pejorative than berk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang)
Sounds malicious.
Plenty of popular tools with questionable names. Splunk and slack comes to mind.
Probably doesn't happen often, but there's people when they have a few alternatives they'll just throw the strange sounding one out first.
Roach could be a last name, or a type of chocolate...
I'm not satisfied with the "just stand up your own server" response as an alternative.
I know it's cutting off my nose, but I've avoided using it because of this. I'm OCD about stupid usernames.
I wish unused usernames got garbage collected.
I really like how Discord handles usernames.
Then I found out that someone else had already made the name a few years before me and was already doing that.
Even unique names that aren't at all dictionary words are at risk of collision. I think the smarter tactic is to accept that you won't get that same nickname everywhere, and just have a few alternatives that you'll use if necessary. Complaining to the masses that a name is already taken isn't going to work.
Anyway: the lesson is that unless you own the top-level domain, you should never think of "your" name. Otherwise you are just getting different leases from different properties.
Do you want to be echelon? Register the domain (ideally on ENS, so that no government can take it away from you), adopt federated/decentralized services and push for adoption of OpenID/WebAuth.
It sounds like he registered the name on open source platforms and you used it on closed ones.
Interesting seeing worlds collide. One of you is going to need to change :)
I'm running my own Matrix server, and it federates nicely with other servers, so you're not losing anything.
They now have to do some serious SEO to be the first result on a Google search of "Element".
On SEO, quoting from the post itself "We’re obviously aware that Element is (once again) both a dictionary word and a mathematical term - but in practice, looking at search results for Element right now, the top hits are for dictionary sites(!) and the field is wide open. Conversely, in a virgin browser on VPN, Riot is the 4th hit on Google for Riot; second only to a certain games company. In other words, we’ve shown that we can successfully adopt dictionary words - and if you do find yourself lost searching in a maze of mathematics, just throw in the word ‘chat’ to get back on track."
So yes there is a big SEO job ahead of us, we don't take anything for granted, but see a viable path to getting a good ranking.
Some examples to demonstrate
[1] ...LexisNexis® CounselLink®, a leading cloud-based enterprise legal management solution for corporate law departments, today announced the release...
[2] ...RecVue, Inc., the fastest growing next generation order-to-cash automation platform, today announced...
etc
[1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/lexisnexis-counsell... [2] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/recvue-achieves-soc...
- ed: typo
seems like that might be because no one was playing? https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/13/20864278/discord-nitro-ga...
It certainly can be gamer-agnostic, but if they lose the gamer base, it could be significant for their success.
EDIT: one -> two
> In fact we have simplified all our naming: Element is also the name for New Vector (the company behind Riot) while Modular, our flagship Matrix hosting service, has become Element Matrix Services.
Is New Vector now names Element, too? Or is this some sort of nickname? A doing business as name?
New Vector -> Element
Modular -> Element Matrix Services
(Although we haven't legally changed New Vector's name yet).
The hardest problem in computer science strikes again!
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't think the project maintainers understand that their core users/fans are waiting for a product they can sell to friends,family and coworkers.
People who don't know tech rely on branding/brand reputation and word of mouth reputation to decide if they are intetested in even trying out a product to begin with.
Which of these is unlike the others?
1) Signal
2) Telegram
3) Element
4) Whatsapp
Hint: The theme is messaging and communication.
I get frustrated when brands, products, and even more so OSS software projects, choose names that have too many other meanings/brands associated with them because it can make it unnecessarily difficult to find relevant information using current search engine technology[0]. I've had situations where I've been clicking through pages and pages of results to find something relevant to what I'm looking for, even with more qualified searches.
You can critique WhatsApp for any number of reasons, if you're so inclined, but it's hard to argue that they didn't pick a good name. It's eminently searchable and doesn't spam results pages for unrelated/tangentially related topics.
[0] I find names like "Signal" irritating for the opposite reason. You're searching for information about the other meanings and yet much of what you get is brand "spam" results related to the messaging system. Great if that's what you're searching for, not if it isn't.
Well obviously it doesn't come up because they only just changed the name! In general Google is pretty good at returning the correct result for ambiguous searches. E.g. try searching for "Signal". Every result is about the signal app for me.
Yeeeees. See my comment at the bottom of my original post. That's great if you're searching for the signal app, but rather annoying if you're not.
Obviously Whatsapp had the advantage that its only competition in search results were typos and people mispelling whats up for comedic effect.
Element has nothing to do with messaging. In my example,signal has something to do with communication(signaling),telegram is obvious, whatsapp is what you say when you talk to someone like 'hello'(what is up?). Element sounds like something I hear about in a chemistry class.
It also has to be catchy. At least Riot was catchy even if it made no sense. A brand name is not a mission stateme t, it's marketing material, full stop.
The other two are meaningless, but at least monosyllabic - "I'll Skype you," "I'll Slack you," "I'll ... Element you?"
Element is a much better name than Riot. Lot less of a hard sell to convert normies.
chat does sound like messaging
Skype sounds like a made up word. Nothing wrong with that.
That said, this doesn't appear to to be a common usage in the US. Webster doesn't have this usage, Wiktionary describes it as obselete and pairs it more with excess than I would, (also they use fifteenth century examples), though Oxford has it.
Conservatives invariably describe liberal demonstrations as "riots," in order to insinuate exactly the type of things you're describing. In response, liberals
1. View the term as something of a badge of honor
2. Have in fact grown more supportive of "vandalism" and "looting," using one's attitude towards them as a sort of litmus test of the value one places on the cause relative to property rights
If you want to sell to a left-aligned US business[^1], I think they'll view the term favorably.
[^1] For example, my wife is an aspiring design professional, and the consultancies in this space, including ones explicitly targeting conservative clients are overwhelmingly left-leaning.
There's no connection between Amazon's brand and what they do, and yet Amazon Inc doesn't seem to suffer, and I don't think Apache Kafka is self-explanatory to just about anyone. Or Sprite (the beverage), and who really gets the name Pepsi? What meaning does Facebook have for anyone outside the US education system? I'm not from the US and I have only an extremely vague idea. No idea about the etymology of Ikea. Slack has actually been a tough sale in more conservative organisations before it got so hugely popular, probably in part because of the negative connotations the name carries – who wants to put their name underneath spending lots on a tool nobody knows, but that's named "Slack"? – and while I don't have a very large set of anecdata for this, I believe the same is true for Riot, maybe to a lesser degree because of the Matrix brand.
It's not catchy, I agree, more like – bland? I think that's fine, it doesn't have to beat Slack on controversial naming. Matrix could become absolutely huge by being adopted in large EU organizations and orgs elsewhere worried about exposing all their communication to the US, so being a bit bland is a feature, much like MS Teams, which must have people in charge of making the product as boring as possible, but it's making inroads into close to all large orgs over here that I'm aware of, and being deeply uncontroversial is certainly part of the reason why.
Plus, for catchiness, there's always Matrix, and I actually like the Element-of-a-Matrix jeux-des-mots.
Not easy, IKEA is an acronym. It represents the founder's first name, last name, home farm, and home village respectively (Ingvar, Kamprad, Elmtaryd, Agunnaryd).
Riot has a political connotation. It's good not to have to try and sell to other people that you're on "riot".
Now, giving that you also have issues with the name, May I interest you in Matrix/XMPP hosting provider that you can pay with crypto and invite your friends, called communick?
https://communick.com
I am very intetested in paying for the product you linked, so long as I don't need email. I will support your product, even with imperfections so long as you remain attentive to your user's needs (hopefully being a paid product helps in that area)
And for anyone else reading, I became an instant fan of matrix/riot/element because the only thing I needed to sign up to the matrix.org home server was username,password and pass a captcha! No email! Same with HN(minus captcha). If this wasn't but a petty annoyance compared to all the real problems of the world, I would be protesting and holding flag burnings with RFC2822 on the flag! (We all have pet peeves :) )
You can invite other people to join the site, and yes, that is basically asking people to put an email address to notify your friends. I might implement later a referral/voucher system to make it easy to invite someone to join your paid contract without having to provide an email, but this is somewhat of a lower priority during the soft launch. Documentation and easier onboarding are definitely bigger tickets on my list.
rglullis, I'm also interested to pay you tons of money. sadly I will only pay for service powered by unicorn's farts and looks like your isn't. When do you think you can arrange that, I literally have my magical credit card in my hand?
edit: btw in the footer of your site, the links under service s are broken
Documentation still coming up, and the links will be correct as soon as I actually publish the pages from the CMS.
Slack comes to mind. Or, I seek you?
But to your point, the only good thing about Skype for example is few syllables and messaging related graphics/logo for me.
But yeah Element is arguably even worse, it's a super common noun and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with communication.
But in the end these naming discussions are always going to end up as bikeshedding. If the tech is good it'll probably manage to be successful despite its mediocre name.
Element Prime Element Whisper
Atom is awful. Rust is awful (programs rust and fall apart over time). React is not bad, it reacts to data changes. Processing is unknown to me.
Processing: https://processing.org/
I guess in practice, for search purposes, we will see some kind of suffix attached to the name, Element Chat or similar.
You must be some scientist? I don't see people crying over the company name Apple.
Joke: I think I'm starting to see the hacker news version of the gell-mann amnesia effect, when you read something you have no opinion of, the hacker news people sound so smart, but when you read something, form your own opinion first, and then arrive at the HN comments to see everyone melting down, you wonder "where did all the smart people go?" 5 minutes later, you are back to being part of the concern mob. :)
People need to be able to find the Element app with a search of Matrix. So the Element Matrix client should work nicely. Working with a company that used Element as part of it's brand name, it was remembered, but no one ever said the Element part. I've seen first hand that people aren't crazy about installing an app on their phone called Riot. Hopefully the new name works.
Also, many people don't get the meaning/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't immediate because "what's up" 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.
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.
You should never just repeat "What's up" back without first answering the question. That is, it's OK to say "Not much, what's up with you?" but not just point black "What's up" in response.
I would also caution against strongly saying that one should "never" fail to answer the question; in the US at least, it's such a common/generic expression that nobody is likely to be offended if you respond with "hey, how's it going?", or "hey, what's up?", or "what's up with you?".
The situation is similar to "howdy", which almost nobody outside the US south realizes is actually a question (short for "how are you doing?"). Sincerely answering "howdy" with e.g. "I'm fine, thanks" is a bit of a shibboleth that southerners can use to identify each other, but failure to do so is not any real faux pas.
Curious, because I'm pretty sure the first time I ran across Whatsapp it was in text, but I tend to 'hear' the things I read/write in my head, as though a voice read them to me. And because of that the pun stuck out. It might just be I'm more inclined to look for puns (playing games with them all the time with friends and family), but wondering if that might be part of it: if you just see the name and it's just a word, not something sounded out in your head, you of course would not notice the play on words.
And then there are the others [1].
1 https://twitter.com/KylePlantEmoji/status/122171379291396506...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W16qzZ7J5YQ
(Forgive me, it was still recent around here at the time the app got popular).
I think whatsapp has a nice ring to it, even if people doesn't know how to write it. Surely being able to write it on a store search is important, but not as important as sounding good.
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And does people get the name of Waze? It took me a while, because in this case not being a native English speaker is a real problem.
But it's clearly worked out well for them, so I guess it's a good thing people like me weren't involved in their naming. shrug
This was the case, but the market has changed. At the time, here in Spain Whatsapp was marketed as "like text, but free". We were still spending about 12 cents per SMS back then, or buying silly packages like "100 sms for 10 euro", so getting it was a no brainer. Anyone could have sold that idea.
Nowadays, however, whatsapp is so ubiquitous that I'm not even sure they can be replaced anytime soon, so if someone wants to undertake that task they better have all the help they can get.
I like the new name.
If you're pissed about Element, you must be absolutely livid about Apple.
Nope. 'Apple Computer Inc.' already marketed themselves specifically first in 'computers' and that association was built over the years.
After they had success in products that weren't attached to only 'desktop/laptop computers' it made sense to remove 'Computer' from the name. The same was done for Tesla Motors Inc. to Tesla Inc.
This is more like a full blown renaming of Riot, New Vector, Modular -> Element. You need to rebuild that SEO and previous associations from scratch again.
Element is a new chat app that people won't have heard of and thus does need to be explained, and the "Element" name isn't helping in that regard because it's extremely generic and has nothing to do with messaging. Even worse, it has bad name collision problems; I just Googled "element app" and all the results are other apps named Element, including one hosted at elementapp.com (which will seem like a more legitimate domain name to many casual users than element.io).
And anyway, they were known as "Apple Computer" back then. See e.g. this ad: https://i.redd.it/f1o3uol6q2dx.jpg The name is not at all ambiguous. It was good branding relative to its competitors.
From a SEO point of view, The transition of 'New Vector' -> 'Element' is just as bad since the continuity of the name is completely lost and has to compete again in the SEO rankings.
The thing is with very generic names in search engines and word of mouth, continuity is essential and the creators of Riot have to rebuild it again with a generic name.
I didn't get that from the comment. Did we read the same comment?
> Apple
Now you're just comparing Apples to Elements. One is a general purpose device, and the other has a specific purpose, providing an opportunity to elude to that purpose through the name.
Hmm, which sounds better?
"Let's chat on the 'ment"
"Let's chat on Ele"
I'm trying to guess which will get used. I'm thinking the second one.
Or maybe just drop the 'e' and say "Let's talk on el'ment"?
That might confuse some Europeans though, maybe just "e'ment" is better.
How cooler than that can it be? I wouldn't be surprised if matrix-based apps get popular at first by using the protocol name, and only them using the app name as a differentiator.
"My niece installed me this app for chatting in the Matrix, what was it called? Ah yes, Element Matrix."
IBM = Big Blue
Ycombinator = YC
Toshiba = Toshi
off the top of my head ;)
Not sure about Twilio, but upon first scan with my old eyes I wanted to read it as 'twillow'
So what is your point?
What was wrong with Riot anyway? It wasn't the best name but it was known. Most name changes are mistakes.
I'm willing to bet that was also a factor in their name change. In fact, a quick Google search for Riot brings up Riot games as the first result and the wikipedia entry for them appears on the side bar. So I'm guessing this was the case for the vast majority of Americans.
>This name change has been a long time in the making. As we explained when we announced the rebrand a few weeks ago, we’ve had major issues with a certain gigantic games company which has blocked us from being able to trademark Riot or even Riot.im - a huge issue when it comes to defending users against abusive forks of the app.
“Do you have Element?”
is less confusing than
“Do you have Signal?”
It's worth noting that other services have equally nonsensical names. Skype, Slack. Others, like Line, have only a vague connection that take thinking about to see.
See the list of services mentioned in Wikipedia's IM template; only half of them mention chat, talk, etc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Instant_messaging
I should note that I'm not saying I agree it's a good name (I don't have an opinion on that, personally), just that it's not unusual.
Also, I have to set a password, but also a recovery password which should not be the same... Yet, I store them together in my KeepassXC db. Why would that be? Oh, now I run into a message key, the third to store in the same db entry :)
[0] https://element.io/
[1] https://element.io/get-started
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.app
[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=im.vector.riot...
One password that you send to the server to authenticate. The other is a passphrase used to seed an encryption key for the data you store on the server securely in a manner the server has no access to.
I understand it's a chat app, but
- The pricing is really confusing (seems like the app is free, but having an account is paying ?). - Is this a professional thing, like slack, or more of a whatsapp-like thing ? Trying to do both ? The whole differentation point seems to be based on the Matrix thing, but it's not really clear why is that important ? (I don't typically care about the backend of the app I use).
I mean, the front page says : "All-in-one secure chat app for teams, friends and organisations. Keeps conversations in your control, safe from data-mining and ads. Talk to everyone through the open global Matrix network, protected by proper end-to-end encryption."
So, the starter is what everyone says. "Safe from data mining and ads" is good, it makes me curious about what is the pricing then, and I wouldn't mind paying a cheap price for a correct messaging app. And then there's this Matrix bit, and I don't even know if it's good or bad. So I went to the pricing page (which doesn't exist, but there are "plans") and here, well the app is free, and I can get my account hosted either somewhere free, or either on the Element Matrix servers, where it should be safe from eavesdropping ? But with proper end to end encryption, it should be safe everywhere ? Or is the app by default not end to end encrypted, but hosting it somewhere makes it so ? It sounds really weird to be honest.
So really, good for you for renaming, but I don't think it's what will make me change (even though since whatsapp is facebook owned, I'm ready to migrate myself and my whole family on something else once the ads are there).
But you're quite right that most users might not care about that (though a fair number of people care about having control over their data, which Matrix gives them since you can self-host a federated server).
Element is now an umbrella brand for several things:
* The most widely used cross-platform Matrix client (used to be called Riot and even further back was called Vector).
* A paid service where they will host a Matrix homeserver for you (used to be called Modular). This is what all of the pricing plans you saw are talking about. Unless you want to host your own server and don't want to manage it yourself, this isn't relevant for you.
* The legal entity which hired people to develop those things as well as contribute to Matrix (used to be called VectorLabs).
This isn't really that big of an announcement, Matrix has existed for at least 5 years now and I've been using it for a while. It's just that a common complaint (the scatter-brained branding) is being resolved by giving a single name to all of these parts (save Matrix -- the protocol -- which is keeping its name).
So Element is free to use, but there are a range of servers to choose from. The matrix.org server is free to use, though as the largest single instance on the public federation is run on a best effort basis.
Alternatives are to either host your own server, or have someone else do that for you. The payment plans that you are looking at reference Element Matrix Services (EMS) which is a SaaS offering allowing you to spin up your own server to be used by whoever you choose to give access to (friends/colleagues etc). The advantages being that you get grater control of your data and improved performance.
Using email as an analogy
Matrix = Email matrix.org / Matrix Hosted Services/ some other server = Fastmail/Gmail/Hotmail etc Element = Thunderbird
It's not a marketed use case though, so I'm sure you could find places the app will still refer to itself as Riot (or now Element).
Alternatively the protocol is open so many third party clients exist: https://matrix.org/clients/ . Feature support in third party clients is pretty unevenly distributed though, E2EE in particular is supported in Riot and Seaglass, experimental in weechat-matrix and nheko, and absent in basically every other client.