Riot is now Element

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

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 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

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

> 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.

> 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

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

Discord=argument=discussion

IRC = internet relay chat

chat does sound like messaging

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

"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.

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

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

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.

Perhaps less confusing than Signalling someone :)

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

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.