9 ms·

the project doesn't use 'toot' anymore and this is like the most trivial concern to have with a piece of software.

by riffic 5y ago

ashtonkem 5y ago
Wording and branding is not a trivial concern if mass adoption is a goal.
- riffic 5y ago
  I don't think it's a goal (it's not mine as a user), but I'm sure you can ask Mastodon gGmbH for their OKRs when it's funding time.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Tao331 5y ago
  When has mass adoption of a social networking platform ever worked out well for users?
  - chefandy 5y ago
    When has lacking it worked out well for social networks?
Nextgrid 5y ago
Frankly, even besides "toot", Mastodon isn't a particularly appealing name either.
- riffic 5y ago
  Why is it, without fail, there's always someone in an HN thread making complaints about the name of something they have absolutely no involvement in? I come here just for the bikeshedding to be honest.
  - Nextgrid 5y ago
    Maybe consider this as constructive criticism? I'm sure a lot of people here are fed up with the existing social media platforms and would want something like Mastodon to succeed, but there's no way it will succeed if it shoots itself in the foot from the beginning with terrible branding. Until Mastodon (or others) can seamlessly interoperate with existing social networks, they have to gain mass adoption to become useful, which means catering to what the masses think is appealing even if you don't particularly agree with that determination.
    - IYasha 5y ago
      FOSS projects never fail to surprise me in their creativity of making weird, unintuitive, terrible names. Just install the damn Linux, list all packages and try guessing what's for what. Even worse than forced codenames in place of distribution versions in digits.
    - riffic 5y ago
      I don't have any personal involvement with Mastodon either, I just think it's a cool piece of software and I'm cranky enough to point out a tired trope I see day-in-day-out on this site (name complaints).
      - Nextgrid 5y ago
        Oh absolutely, I agree that it's very cool at a technical level. But I don't believe it's going to succeed at its mission with the current branding. It is of course open-source software and they don't have to do anything if they're happy with the status-quo, but imagine how better if would be if you had something with the branding & adoption of Twitter and the features & benefits of Mastodon?
        riffic 5y ago
        Mastodon is pushing releases out the door at a pace I'm happy with - they're at version 3.5 so far since its initial launch of 2016 or so. I'd consider that (and the sustainability of the project) a success. A lot of project maintainers burn out after an amount of time or stall out completely so this is an indicator there's something more here and it's healthy. I'm not quite sure I agree with the point you're getting at concerning branding and mass adoption.
- brimble 5y ago
  I think that's a bigger problem, though maybe still not a grave one. I wouldn't be surprised if a very high percentage of people write "mastAdon", without autocorrect to save them. We're also all missing the bigger problem here, which is that "mast" is rooted in the word for "breast". ( /s for the concern, but it in fact is)
- orblivion 5y ago
  I actually think it's pretty bad-ass. Uncharacteristic of FOSS. A bit clunky sounding, but that makes it feel all the less corporate to me. But maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's why it's as successful as it is.
  - chefandy 5y ago
    If your target audience is only FOSS fans, great. Even a FOSS fans like to socialize with other people and that’s kind of important when you’re choosing a vibe/look/feel for a social network. FOSSy vs corporate is a false dichotomy. The FOSSy “don’t you dare criticize my logo… I spent a weekend learning Gimp to make it… and yes the G stands for Gnu” aesthetic says “tech-savvy only”. It is off-putting for many, and FAR MORE EXCLUSIVE than any sane corporate design, save luxury brands. It doesn’t signify the lack of an in-club— it is an in-club.
- 10729287 5y ago
  It is, for a metal band.
cbozeman 5y ago
- jerojero 5y ago
  Only half of the world is stupid, everyone else is pretty much above average intelligence. I think most people are not really aware of mastodon at all, I'm not sure how much of the problem has to do with the tooting and how much has to do with simply mastodon not having done any marketing whatsoever. Though I hear its popular in Japan? Not only that but federation does have a higher barrier of entry, in twitter you go into their website and in a few clicks later you can fully experience the website. Mastodon, last time I checked was not so easy. Even a few extra clicks, a few extra decisions make it difficult to onboard people.
  - function_seven 5y ago
    > Only half of the world is stupid, everyone else is pretty much above average intelligence I'm not going to get into a median vs. mean debate here. As far as IQ—or whatever metric you use—goes, I wouldn't be surprised if those 2 numbers were nearly the same. But what if 80% of us is stupid? Everyone with below-average intelligence, and more than half of us with above-average intelligence? Could be that "Not Stupid" doesn't begin until IQ 110, or 115. I'd toot it, but that sounds lame.
    - jerojero 5y ago
      It's just a joke :) I would rarely use mean to discuss societal distributions as they can be very misleading (good example of this is when you want to see average versus median income in unequal countries). Though I think IQ is bell-shaped so mean and median coincide or are close. Thing is, I would never be brave enough to say "80% of us are stupid". People can be smart in many different ways, I know people who are not very good at numbers but are extremely good at picking up languages; isn't that an amazing ability? Funny people, good musicians, creative people... I just really don't like IQ as a metric of intelligence so to me it really falls flat when applied to the real world.
- deleted 5y ago
jazzyjackson 5y ago
software, sure, name your variables what ever you want, but this is a social network I still hear toot used to distinguish from tweets, is there a new word suggested? The wikipedia on Mastadon states, 'Posts are called "toots" instead of "tweets", as is the case on Twitter' based on a 2017 article from the Verge so maybe someone should update it.
aeldidi 5y ago
It definitely seems like they do: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/

the project doesn't use 'toot' anymore and this is like the most trivial concern to have with a piece of software.

by riffic 5y ago

the project doesn't use 'toot' anymore and this is like the most trivial concern to have with a piece of software.

ashtonkem 5y ago

Wording and branding is not a trivial concern if mass adoption is a goal.

riffic 5y ago
I don't think it's a goal (it's not mine as a user), but I'm sure you can ask Mastodon gGmbH for their OKRs when it's funding time.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Tao331 5y ago
When has mass adoption of a social networking platform ever worked out well for users?
- chefandy 5y ago
  When has lacking it worked out well for social networks?

Nextgrid 5y ago

Frankly, even besides "toot", Mastodon isn't a particularly appealing name either.

riffic 5y ago
Why is it, without fail, there's always someone in an HN thread making complaints about the name of something they have absolutely no involvement in? I come here just for the bikeshedding to be honest.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Maybe consider this as constructive criticism? I'm sure a lot of people here are fed up with the existing social media platforms and would want something like Mastodon to succeed, but there's no way it will succeed if it shoots itself in the foot from the beginning with terrible branding. Until Mastodon (or others) can seamlessly interoperate with existing social networks, they have to gain mass adoption to become useful, which means catering to what the masses think is appealing even if you don't particularly agree with that determination.
  - IYasha 5y ago
    FOSS projects never fail to surprise me in their creativity of making weird, unintuitive, terrible names. Just install the damn Linux, list all packages and try guessing what's for what. Even worse than forced codenames in place of distribution versions in digits.
  - riffic 5y ago
    I don't have any personal involvement with Mastodon either, I just think it's a cool piece of software and I'm cranky enough to point out a tired trope I see day-in-day-out on this site (name complaints).
    - Nextgrid 5y ago
      Oh absolutely, I agree that it's very cool at a technical level. But I don't believe it's going to succeed at its mission with the current branding. It is of course open-source software and they don't have to do anything if they're happy with the status-quo, but imagine how better if would be if you had something with the branding & adoption of Twitter and the features & benefits of Mastodon?
      - riffic 5y ago
        Mastodon is pushing releases out the door at a pace I'm happy with - they're at version 3.5 so far since its initial launch of 2016 or so. I'd consider that (and the sustainability of the project) a success. A lot of project maintainers burn out after an amount of time or stall out completely so this is an indicator there's something more here and it's healthy. I'm not quite sure I agree with the point you're getting at concerning branding and mass adoption.
brimble 5y ago
I think that's a bigger problem, though maybe still not a grave one. I wouldn't be surprised if a very high percentage of people write "mastAdon", without autocorrect to save them. We're also all missing the bigger problem here, which is that "mast" is rooted in the word for "breast". ( /s for the concern, but it in fact is)
orblivion 5y ago
I actually think it's pretty bad-ass. Uncharacteristic of FOSS. A bit clunky sounding, but that makes it feel all the less corporate to me. But maybe it's just me. Or maybe it's why it's as successful as it is.
- chefandy 5y ago
  If your target audience is only FOSS fans, great. Even a FOSS fans like to socialize with other people and that’s kind of important when you’re choosing a vibe/look/feel for a social network. FOSSy vs corporate is a false dichotomy. The FOSSy “don’t you dare criticize my logo… I spent a weekend learning Gimp to make it… and yes the G stands for Gnu” aesthetic says “tech-savvy only”. It is off-putting for many, and FAR MORE EXCLUSIVE than any sane corporate design, save luxury brands. It doesn’t signify the lack of an in-club— it is an in-club.
10729287 5y ago
It is, for a metal band.

cbozeman 5y ago

jerojero 5y ago
Only half of the world is stupid, everyone else is pretty much above average intelligence. I think most people are not really aware of mastodon at all, I'm not sure how much of the problem has to do with the tooting and how much has to do with simply mastodon not having done any marketing whatsoever. Though I hear its popular in Japan? Not only that but federation does have a higher barrier of entry, in twitter you go into their website and in a few clicks later you can fully experience the website. Mastodon, last time I checked was not so easy. Even a few extra clicks, a few extra decisions make it difficult to onboard people.
- function_seven 5y ago
  > Only half of the world is stupid, everyone else is pretty much above average intelligence I'm not going to get into a median vs. mean debate here. As far as IQ—or whatever metric you use—goes, I wouldn't be surprised if those 2 numbers were nearly the same. But what if 80% of us is stupid? Everyone with below-average intelligence, and more than half of us with above-average intelligence? Could be that "Not Stupid" doesn't begin until IQ 110, or 115. I'd toot it, but that sounds lame.
  - jerojero 5y ago
    It's just a joke :) I would rarely use mean to discuss societal distributions as they can be very misleading (good example of this is when you want to see average versus median income in unequal countries). Though I think IQ is bell-shaped so mean and median coincide or are close. Thing is, I would never be brave enough to say "80% of us are stupid". People can be smart in many different ways, I know people who are not very good at numbers but are extremely good at picking up languages; isn't that an amazing ability? Funny people, good musicians, creative people... I just really don't like IQ as a metric of intelligence so to me it really falls flat when applied to the real world.
deleted 5y ago

jazzyjackson 5y ago

software, sure, name your variables what ever you want, but this is a social network I still hear toot used to distinguish from tweets, is there a new word suggested? The wikipedia on Mastadon states, 'Posts are called "toots" instead of "tweets", as is the case on Twitter' based on a 2017 article from the Verge so maybe someone should update it.

aeldidi 5y ago

It definitely seems like they do: https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/ https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/posting/