[daveid]

> Nobody thinks of Mastodons when thinking of any form of communication, but we all hear birds tweeting every day and have been used in real life to send messages

This seems like backwards reasoning. If you named a new platform after pigeons, which were actually used for transmitting information, you'd get critics saying "It's so archaic, nobody has used pigeons for 80 years!" Birds carrying messages is just as "extinct" of a metaphor as Mastodons are as an animal.

[barbecue_sauce]

Except, with Mastodon, there isn't even a metaphor. At least Spotify (to look at another example), which is a terrible name, is a non-sense word without any baggage.

[olah_1]

"Pidgin" or some variation is actually a great name for a communication tool. You're better at naming things than you realize.

[r00fus]

http://pidgin.im was a great chat client when I had friends/clients who gtalk, XMPP and sametime. Even supports OTR encryption.