Edit: alright I’m sticking this up here because a number of people seem confused–this post isn’t trying to convince you that “fediverse” is a bad term–rather it’s a discussion of why I think “threadiverse” is a good umbrella term, for the forum-based part of the fediverse specifically. (lemmy+kbin)
So; we’ve got something special right here; a federated, thread based forum; but we’re still on the forefront right now; most people are still stuck on the old thing; reddit–they’ll come in time, but they usually have a hard time getting here–largely because they don’t know what “here” is.
Say Lemmy or Kbin, and you’ve already got problems; you’ve got to explain all the details of the platform, and how Lemmy and Kbin are really the same thing, etc, etc–too specific–
Say Fediverse, and you’ve got the opposite problem; too broad and vague, such that nobody will know what you’re talking about unless you unload a whole pile of overwhelming details–we need a term that talks about only this segment of the Fediverse; the thread based forum portion–just as the World Wide Web could only really catch on once terms like, “internet” or “web” became widespread, the federated alternative to Reddit will only catch on once it has a name too–it’s a branding game.
Thus, if we want to beat Reddit at branding, we need a better name than them–In my opinon, “Threadiverse” is the best name for the job, for reasons I’ll lay out below:
First off; any good name communicates a lot of information–like how “Reddit” contains both “Read+it” and Red, the colour associated with their brand–it’s made up of those three parts, plus the company name:
“Reddit”=Read+It+Red+Reddit
We, however, don’t have a company, and are thus not bound by a need for that kind of recognizeability–we’re looking for a new term; a term like internet; that doesn’t need to communicate anything other than what the platform is.
So enter Threadiverse;
Like “Reddit”, “Threadiverse” is made up of a number of parts–first, and most obviously to an outside observer you’ve got thread+universe. Simple, and easy to remember, just like “Reddit” is from Read and it. But we’ve got more depth too, just like Reddit does; but unlike Reddit, our term has two deeper meanings; first, again, more obvious to an outside observer we have “diverse”–what we want our platform to be: a diverse marketplace of ideas; where reddit has “red” the colour of their brand, a superficial bit of brand information, and representation of their existence as a corporation, we have another descriptor of ourselves–all this is not even to mention “Fediverse”, the term we take to get “Threadiverse” in the first place, but that part is not relevant to the outside observer who knows nothing of the platform, its makeup, or its history.
so in short; within that name we’ve got one more bit of meaning than they do, and, rather than using most of our meanings to communicate superficial brand information, as Reddit does with having their company colour as part of their name; we have “diverse”, as our goal is not to be a company, as Reddit’s is, but to be diverse marketplace of ideas, and an exchange of useful information.
TL:DR:
“Threadiverse”: Thread+Universe+Diverse+Fediverse+Threadiverse
“Reddit”: Read+it+Red+Reddit
More info = good; therefore “Threadiverse”>“Reddit”.
And therefore “Threadiverse” is probably one of the best names our platform can have.
I’m certainly not the first person to use the term “Threadiverse”; but I haven’t seen much discussion of why it’s the name we ought to be using–and none about why that in particular matters for getting people to understand the platform–hence why I’m making a post about it–a post which I meant to make two weeks ago, but accidentally deleted instead; so here it is now.
Thanks to @cat 's post, and a lot of the top comments, for getting me to think about this a bit more–check that out for more reasons why we ought to be using a name like “Threadiverse”.
Anyway; those are my 2 cents (or 20) on the matter of names, and why Threadiverse is a good one; thoughts?
I think their explanation is valid and important. Early adopters not caring about branding is one of the reasons their software stays in a minority
you mean this explanation?
i think it is a joke. people who are staying on reddit right now are doing that because they don’t care about fediverse and are still happy with scrolling through w/e they are scrolling on reddit right now. if that changes in the future, it is not going to be because someone changes fediverse to threadiverse.
that is absolute nonsense. it is the product that makes the brand, not the other way around. if you have good product, you will make word-class brand from random mix of characters like “google”. if you have bad product, no brand is going to help you.
that is not to say that fediverse is bad product, it is purely comment on people overestimating the almighty brand.
hey; just because I thought it was funny doesn’t invalidate my points–and I’m not saying that it’s vital we have a good name to sum up this segment of the fediverse for it to succeed; I’m saying it’ll probably succeed faster if we have one.
i am saying it does not matter. people go to buy/use product or service because it is good product, not becaus it has nice name.
beside, i question your idea that threadiverse is for some strange reason better than fediverse. it is longer, harder to pronounciate and write, and people really do not care whether it is somehow mix of four different words.
I think you’ve misunderstood my post–perhaps I wasn’t clear enough; but I’m not saying fediverse is a bad term that needs replacing; nor am I saying the threadiverse won’t succeed if it’s not called the threadiverse–
I’m saying that fediverse is a broad term that encompasses all of the connected sites here; not just the thread-based forum ones–it’s a broad umbrella term, and a good one.
But in my opinion at least, it’s good to have more niche umbrella terms like threadiverse for use beneath the broad ones–
You’re perfectly entitled to disagree, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try to shut down productive discussion just because you personally don’t see the need for more specific terminology.
i get that part, but i am saying that the name is not a reason why people did or did not came here and will have zero name on the speed of the migration.
people who are here now are mostly people who are fans of opensource and were willing to go through the birth problems because of that. they did not came because of the name.
the rest of the people will number of their friends here reach some critical mass for them to notice.
you have live example of this in musk trying to rebrand twitter right now. he thinks he will change the clusterfuck he created by changing the name, but he doesn’t get that name is not the problem and will have zero effect.
unless you have real name for changing the brand (like two companies merged and you want the branding to reflect that), changing the brand is usually desperate act of clueless manager who just doesn’t have better idea.
“Attempting to shut down discussion” is probably the wrong phrasing–regardless calling opposing positions “a joke” will never be conducive to useful discussion.
To actually address your point–yes; that’s what I’m saying–we are the early adopters; and yes, nobody ever cares about the name of something–and frankly, the name doesn’t matter.
But right now, the platform we are on has no name–hence why I made a post about one particular name I think is good, and why.
As I said before; we have names for the individual access points; Lemmy and Kbin-- and we have a name for the ecosystem they exist within; the Fediverse-- but we have no name for what Lemmy and Kbin are; there’s currently no standard umbrella term for the forum section of the Fediverse.
My point is not that having the perfect name matters necessarily; rather that having a name at all is something that is, in my opinion, important–the more useful the terminology the better.