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I think that's one approach, but many other federated systems don't do this. ActivityPub does not do this really, instead Mastodon, a product using ActivityPub,

I think that's one approach, but many other federated systems don't do this. ActivityPub does not do this really, instead Mastodon, a product using ActivityPub, markets itself. Arguably you could look at HTTP and say that HTTP doesn't have a fancy landing page pitching itself to users, browsers have landing pages pitching their experiences to users. Matrix could have a fancy landing page pitching itself to implementers who implement homeservers, bridges, or clients, and they could market to end users.

dale_glass 3y ago
Maybe "Matrix" is not the ideal name for it then. ActivityPub, HTTP, XMPP, etc sound like technical things. If you land on a page talking about the "XMPP specification" then you quickly get the idea that it's not where you want to be as an end user. "Matrix" does sound a lot like the name of an end-user relevant product of some sort, and a client sending users to matrix.org compounds the issue. There's a reason why big companies have brand guidelines. They have people on staff that understand that people are confused quite easily and don't want to figure out where "Matrix", "Element" and "Element X" stand in relation to each other.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  I wouldn't read anything into a name. For a start that's very language specific, but also there are plenty of non-user facing technologies with non-technical sounding names, and vice-versa. The client I use doesn't send users to matrix.org, and I would assume that's by choice. Why do users need to know? Matrix.org is clearly a hub for the spec, documentation, GitHub links, developer community.
- cvwright 3y ago
  Yeah it’s unfortunate that they picked the “cool” name for the protocol, not the product. I keep saying that they should make a Matrix branded client that lets you easily donate to the foundation (like Signal does) and creates accounts only on matrix.org. Unfortunately that doesn’t really work with the ethos of the project.

dale_glass 3y ago

Maybe "Matrix" is not the ideal name for it then. ActivityPub, HTTP, XMPP, etc sound like technical things. If you land on a page talking about the "XMPP specification" then you quickly get the idea that it's not where you want to be as an end user. "Matrix" does sound a lot like the name of an end-user relevant product of some sort, and a client sending users to matrix.org compounds the issue. There's a reason why big companies have brand guidelines. They have people on staff that understand that people are confused quite easily and don't want to figure out where "Matrix", "Element" and "Element X" stand in relation to each other.

danpalmer 3y ago
I wouldn't read anything into a name. For a start that's very language specific, but also there are plenty of non-user facing technologies with non-technical sounding names, and vice-versa. The client I use doesn't send users to matrix.org, and I would assume that's by choice. Why do users need to know? Matrix.org is clearly a hub for the spec, documentation, GitHub links, developer community.
cvwright 3y ago
Yeah it’s unfortunate that they picked the “cool” name for the protocol, not the product. I keep saying that they should make a Matrix branded client that lets you easily donate to the foundation (like Signal does) and creates accounts only on matrix.org. Unfortunately that doesn’t really work with the ethos of the project.