Riot is now Element

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.

Which of these is unlike the others?

1) Signal

2) Telegram

3) Element

4) Whatsapp

Hint: The theme is messaging and communication.

Tbh, I don't see any problems with the name? I like it.

Signal and Telegram are more obvious, yes, but it's not like unrelated or unique names couldn't work.

Slack comes to mind. Or, I seek you?

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.

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.

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.

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.

I like it. +1

Riot has a political connotation. It's good not to have to try and sell to other people that you're on "riot".

Most EU languages have the word element too, with the chemistry/physics meaning.

You can also use https://dittochat.org or https://fluffychat.im

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 :) )

Does "whatsapp" sound like messaging? or "Skype"? or "Slack"? or "IRC"?

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).

I think "let's chat on Element" has an awesome ring to it, personally :D

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.

> See the difference?

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.

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.

> 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.

Even a "Riot" is a kind of boisterous conversation - like a chat, but less commoditized and more populist

Somehow I hadn't made the connection that WhatsApp sounds like "What's up" until now.

WhatsApp sounds like "what's up" - it definitely suggests conversation

The other two are meaningless, but at least monosyllabic - "I'll Skype you," "I'll Slack you," "I'll ... Element you?"

or kik or discord

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.

Discord=argument=discussion

You can notify without email though. If the patform itself is communication related they can send you in-app message.

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.

Slack is an absolutely horrible name, especially for work-related purposes; it doesn't reflect messaging but laziness and productivity waste.

"I know I have Adobe Elements installed somewhere but I never knew it was a chat app"

meanwhile, elsewhere on HN... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23842137

IRC = internet relay chat

chat does sound like messaging

Skype sounds like a made up word. Nothing wrong with that.

If it was already discussed I guess that's fine then my bad.

edit: btw in the footer of your site, the links under service s are broken

If I randomly see the URL "element.io" I'd think it's like a Bootstrap alternative or something.

element and whatsapp have clearly nothing to do with communication, element must be some chemistry app and whatsapp some social network I guess

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.

I'm not a native speaker, but I associate a riot with group violence, vandalism, looting, that kind of thing.

I plan to use a phrase like 'lets connect on Element'.

Element is a much better name than Riot. Lot less of a hard sell to convert normies.

Yeah, thanks for checking it out.

Documentation still coming up, and the links will be correct as soon as I actually publish the pages from the CMS.

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. :)

Discord may be starting to regret their own name as they finally move away from gamer-centric branding and start broadening their marketing.

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.

"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.

You're allowed to dislike the name.

I like the new name.

If you're pissed about Element, you must be absolutely livid about Apple.

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.

This is so true. I remember this when I had a conversation with a Spanish developer and he said Java mid-sentence...

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.

Someone had to explain it to me before I got it. I still think it's a bad name.

Secrets could have been a good ( and hilarious) name... 'let's chat in Secrets'

> 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.

You could show LN invoice (QR code) right in the app when that happens.

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.

>No idea about the etymology of Ikea.

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).

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.

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.

So what is your point?

That is an interesting idea, but (1) assumes the user added my support account as a contact and (2) might create a phishing vector.

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?"

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.

Like wise...

Am a zon? Mic ro soft?

Microsoft Amazon Facebook Instagram ?

Like Toyota

>a two syllable pseudonym will materialize

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.

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.

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.

Just realized that I meant you need only username/password. To reiterate, email is not needed at all.

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.

"I'll Riot you" is also a non-sequitur at best

This is politicized in the US.

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.

It is not great, but it is also not a disaster. See Go, React, Rust, Processing, Atom, Windows, etc...

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).

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 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 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

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.

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 was talking about when Apple originally came about, not Apple today.

Ele sounds pretty good to me, pronounced like Elly.

> pissed

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.

Wasn’t it originally Apple Computer?

QuepasApp?

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.

Windows makes sense. Windows to the world. Go has a sensible keyword: golang for searchability.

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.

Apple is the company name. The product names (ios, mac os, ipad ...) are all unique enough.

I wouldn't use "discord" as synonym for "argument" more like "disagreement" ie. the argumentation phase is over.

Microsoft = MS

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'

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.

Processing: https://processing.org/

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.

Agreed. This is an absolutely horrible name that I'm sure was chosen by poll or committee.

What was wrong with Riot anyway? It wasn't the best name but it was known. Most name changes are mistakes.

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.

. o O ( ellie the element )

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

Hahaha thank you for making me laugh so hard

I recently read a BBC article that contained the usage. Perhaps it is more common in British English.

Because Riot means Riot Games to a substantial portion of the internet.

Facebook is two syllables.

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.

> 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.

So how do you reply to "What's up", by saying "Not much" or repeating "What's up"? I've never been able to figure this one out.

"How's it going?"

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).

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.

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.

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.

"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.

In Brazil we call it "Zap".

WhatsApp dominates Brazil completely as well, and people called it ZapZap or just zap.

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.

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.

Amazon Microsoft Mac and cheese Oreo's Doritos McDonald's Whataburger

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.

Whatsapp sounds lile what's up

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.

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.

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.

On the other hand,

“Do you have Element?”

is less confusing than

“Do you have Signal?”

If you are a father, “the sky.” Otherwise, just repeating “what’s up” or “hey, how are you!?” is fine.

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.

From the article:

>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.

I don't think that's it, I hear words in my head, but didn't get the pun until I watched a Jimmy Fallon bit where he made fun of the name.

Really? I'm a native Spanish speaker, and the first thing I thought when learning about the app was that[1] ad.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W16qzZ7J5YQ

(Forgive me, it was still recent around here at the time the app got popular).

"I'll meet you in the Matrix".

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."

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.

the way my family in Spain says Whatsapp is so funny. "tengo un mesnaje en la wassa"

You haven't seen most people use slack then

Perhaps less confusing than Signalling someone :)

You shouldn't say that anyway, since the protocol is called Matrix

Atom and rust have a technical audience

Apple and many fruit names are catchy and memorable. Like blackberry!

Reminder: you can fork and rename the software into whatever you want

Does any statement starting with "Hey bro" have a ring to it?

The point of having a made up name that has nothing to do with the thing it is about is that it makes defending a trademark easier.

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.

Wait until they start adding to it.

Element Prime Element Whisper

Are you thinking of Wechat? Whatsapp is run by Facebook.

I thought that they renamed due to BLM movement or something until read the sentence.

BTW Toshiba is consists of Tou + Shiba in Japanese so it is two syllable name.

I agree with you. You know what's worse? FaceApp. But somehow, the general public just gets it. This is what the peoples like.

How is “shiba” one syllable? Is it pronounced differently in Japanese?

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.

Ellie sounds better than Element.

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.

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.

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.

Who would use a word "element" in their daily conversation that is indistinguishable from the context?

You must be some scientist? I don't see people crying over the company name Apple.

Well that proves it, it's not a great name :)

I just realized what the name mean, knowing the expression at least since wazzzzaaaaahh

As someone who uses none of the above, "Hey bro, let's chat on Element" and "Hey bro, let's chat on Riot" have the same ring.

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 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.

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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.

85% of people hear their voice when reading / forming thoughts.

And then there are the others [1].

1 https://twitter.com/KylePlantEmoji/status/122171379291396506...