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by throwaway1997 2187 days ago
That's actually a good name
3 comments

Please no. It's not unique enough for a Google search. There's a reason all the major brands are unusual or made up names.
Apple.

Ring.

Amazon.

The irony is that a google search for Vector first comes up with Vector Marketing, which sells Cutco Knives.

> Cutco Knives

God I remember that shitty company. They recruit University students to sell their knives to their friends and family. They're not really good knives either, just slightly better than most store knives and sold at a markup near that of really high end commercial knives.

That's an awfull name as it is used all over the place in technical documentation. As soon as you'll look for help in a search engine you'd get bazillion of unrelated results.

If you founded you company in the 1980's for sure you can choose any good sounding name, even a very common fruit and it willl be alright.

But in 2020 please don't hurt the community of devellopers that deal with graphical element by reverting to such a generic random name...

I mentioned in another comment, Vector Marketing firmly holds the top spot in a google search for "vector".

Even if the Deciders called it Vector.im or Vector Messenger, and did some SEO, it wouldn't be that hard to find.

In fact Riot.im shows up at #8 on DDG and #6 on Google (for me) when "riot" is searched, even when "riot" is a very hyped up search term. (https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=riot)

And that is still awful but for other people. Vector is a commonly used term in tech. If you lookup for help about using (mathematical) vector you'll now have to narrow the search using other tag otherwise you gonna get spammed with marketing crap about that technology.
Another definition for vector is "an organism that transmits a disease". Perhaps this is not the best choice of name during a worldwide pandemic.
Ironically that was the pun we were making back in 2015 when Riot used to be called Vector. Not only is a Matrix made up of Vectors, but also Vector would be the vehicle for virally spreading Matrix throughout the internet :D

Agreed it's not the best parallel to draw these days, though...

I still think Vector was a great name for a Matrix client. I don't think it would put off non-techies really, but I'm looking forward to seeing what you're coming up with!