Main reason is that they couldn't trademark the "Riot" name due to "Riot Games" company. Edit: They have mentioned this in the blog. Please read that before downvoting.
Could they trademark Element though? I mean it is a very general term.
Riot is now Element
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Re: Riot is now Element
#32While 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".
Re: Riot is now Element
#33I don't like the name because it is so generic and for me the word invokes no association with communication whatsoever.
Re: Riot is now Element
#34I don't like the name because it is so generic and for me the word invokes no association with communication whatsoever.
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.
Re: Riot is now Element
#35It 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.
Feel like I'm missing something important here. What's happening with .io?
Questionable governance : https://hackernoon.com/stop-using-io-domain-names-for-produc...
Re: Riot is now Element
#36I don't like the new name, is too generic. I think an original alternative would have been better, like Trello, Slack, ...
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
Re: Riot is now Element
#37While 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.
Re: Riot is now Element
#38[deleted]
Re: Riot is now Element
#39I don't like the name because it is so generic and for me the word invokes no association with communication whatsoever.
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.
I think WhatsApp is a play on "What's Up" which actually makes a lot of sense given that's pretty much the point of a lot of casual conversation haha
Re: Riot is now Element
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 beh…
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. 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 50…
True. An important first step. Glad to see that there is a conscious effort now. Hope Matrix succeds and sees widespread applications.