[iamnothere]

A few people show up to say this every time Mastodon is mentioned. I disagree, it's memorable and I like it. Obviously the users don't mind either.

Twitter sounded like a dumb name too, but they kept it and now nobody thinks twice about it. (Can you imagine: "Twit means idiot, nobody will use this service because of that!") Most creative names sound dumb until they stick around long enough.

[philwelch]

A few people also used to show up to say similar things about DuckDuckGo’s vaguely Fisher-Price branding, and now DDG is still a fringe of the market even in our increasingly privacy-conscious, big-tech-company-skeptical times. Sometimes branding matters.

[yellowapple]

> and now DDG is still a fringe of the market even in our increasingly privacy-conscious, big-tech-company-skeptical times

Is it, though? I mean, yeah, it's no Google or Bing or Yahoo, but it also doesn't have Google or Microsoft or Yahoo money, either.

It's on the brink of breaking 1% in the US [1]; that might seem small, but that'd be a good 33% of ChromeOS users or 10% of macOS users. Not bad, considering.

And really, blaming DuckDuckGo's branding for its poor marketshare is pretty ridiculous given the competition. I mean come on, what kind of a name is "Google"? Or "Bing"? Or "Yahoo"? The ridiculousness of the branding doesn't seem to actually be a problem, since that's actually constant across all of the top four browsers in the US.

[1]: http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/uni...

[2]: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/united-states-...

[door5]

I would propose that bad branding is a symptom of a deeper problem, that the services were designed by engineers motivated primarily by ideology, which is very unlikely to reach a wide audience outside of engineers and activists

[iamnothere]

On the other hand, they've been profitable since at least 2015 without invasive tracking. They have a lock on their niche in the marketplace, and their Alexa rank is in the top 200 and rising. Their main competitors are two of the biggest companies in the world, yet they are growing and showing no signs of slowing down. I'd call that a success.

Search engines are a mature market. You're not going to displace Google unless you manage to disrupt the entire industry somehow; social tried and failed at this, so it's not clear what this would even mean at present.

As a challenger in a mature market, DDG has the right strategy, and they are playing their hand successfully. I seriously doubt that branding is holding them back.

[jamesrcole]

> A few people show up to say this every time Mastodon is mentioned. I disagree, it's memorable and I like it. Obviously the users don't mind either.

Nothing's stopping someone from using it and at the same time thinking it has a poor name.

But anyway, what the current users think of it is hardly a sign in favour of the name, because that user base doesn't seem very big for a tool whose value largely comes from the size of its network of users.

The relevant question is how the name comes across to the average potential user.

[CamperBob2]

Twitter = cute birds chirping at each other to communicate

Mastodon = extinct elephant-like mammal

This is why successful companies hire marketers.

[iamnothere]

Funny, the first thing I get when I think of a mastodon is fur, and that it's a huge animal. I guess it's all in the eye of the beholder... like most branding, TBH.

Having been in the room when working on branding, there's always plausible objections unless the brand is completely anodyne, and by extension terminally forgettable. At the end of the day you just have to go with something that isn't terrible.

[daveid]

What's not cute about elephants? Especially fluffy ones?

[notatoad]

"Extinct" is not really a good idea to associate your brand with.

[codetrotter]

In the world of outdoor equipment alone, two of the brands I like the most were named after extinct animals; Arc’teryx (referring to the Archaeopteryx) and Mammut (mammoth). Both of whom you will find a lot of products from in any decent sports store.

And it’s not just the names — look at their logos.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ARC%27TERYX_logo.svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mammut_logo.jpg

The first one is straight up the fossil skeleton of the animal they based their name on! If that doesn’t spell extinction I don’t know what does.

These two companies make jackets, climbing harnesses, trekking shoes, backpacks and more.

I doubt that either of these two that I mentioned have been negatively impacted by the fact the animals they have based their names and logos on are extinct.

(My personal opinion is that it makes them cooler even — the prehistoric times and the animals that used to roam the earth are very fascinating to me. And I think a lot of people agree. Look for example at how popular the Jurrasic Park movies were. People love this stuff, don’t they?)

[philwelch]

Well, isn’t that the point? The intended association is supposed to be with paleontology, a type of outdoors excursion. It’s aspirational marketing—maybe if you wear an Arc’teryx jacket you’ll be equipped to go out in the wilderness and discover ancient fossils or something.

[ummonk]

The kind of sentiment that is successful in mountaineering is not the kind of sentiment that is successful in social media.

[WAHa_06x36]

That really, really isn't a problem. It just isn't.

[tejtm]

True. But thinking ahead "Resurrected" could be awesome.