To be clear: Riot's new name is not going to use the word Matrix - any more than Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge etc use the word "Web". Riot is just one client for Matrix, and it'd be completely unfair if it tried to hijack the name Matrix for its own purposes - and I'd hope that the Matrix.org Foundation would take steps to stop such a thing from happening.
So I'm afraid the whole "Is that Matrix?", "Yes, I'm using FluffyChat/Riot/Whatever to connect to Matrix" conversation is still going to be there. Just like someone might say "ooh, what Web Browser is that?". This much is a feature, not a bug.
I think this feels disappointing because you’re saying that my anecdotal evidence — that the matrix ecology of proper nouns is confusing to newcomers — doesn’t bear true in the wider world. That feels surprising to me.
If I could wave a magic wand, formatting matrix usernames as “alice@alice.com” instead of “@alice:alice.com” feels like a similar opportunity to make things more friendly to newcomers.
It’s these little things that make a huge difference to success. TL=com/ORG=ycombinator/HOST=news addressing vs news.ycombinator.com. Or calling Outlook an “MUA” instead of just saying it’s a “mail client”.
It’s technically correct. Some people say that technically correct is the best kind of correct, but often it feels like the most convincing strategy is the one where you don’t need to add explanation or bon mots to win over opinion — people can just see it’s right.
I’m surprised that Matrix didn’t think they would benefit from trying to become well known as Matrix first, then diversify into FluffyChat etc second.
That seems like a missed opportunity. If you're renaming anyway, why not make it easier for people to understand what's going on?
I mean I don't think the browser analogy is that great, it seems more the exception than the rule. Eg most IRC clients have the word IRC in them, or something very close (eg mIRC, irssi, etc). Most email clients have the word "mail" in them. Torrent clients, same. Why shouldn't a Matrix client have the word Matrix in it?
Just call it iMatrix or uMatrix or something like that, and you're removing a lot of confusion. If mIRC and uTorrent and Gmail can get away with that, so can you.
It's not the same context, not the same scale and not the same times. It should be pertinent to have a client name reflecting the proximity with the protocol.
To be fair, unlike Signal, Matrix forces users to manage their own encryption keys across devices (or at the very least, be aware of them), so a client-protocol confusion is relatively a lesser concern. It hasn't proven too confusing for many people to form a distinction between "the web" and their choice of browser.
> It hasn't proven too confusing for many people to form a distinction between "the web" and their choice of browser.
That’s because swathes of people simply conflate the two. To a lot of people the icon for their web browser may as well just be called “The Internet”. I’ve heard that some single digit percentage of Google searches are people searching for Facebook.
I think you give too much credit to the level of technical knowledge of the average person.
A lot of people who are not particularly computer literate do not really grasp the difference between the web, the browser, and the search engine. Generally it's all just "the google" or similar. At least from my limited tech support experience.
This is welcome news. Some groups in Hong Kong have been considering it as an alternative to Telegram but the name has been discouraging as in this climate it could be used as evidence against anyone involved in protesting activity.
Hope the new name is either more abstract or closely aligned to what the software actually does.
The name of the mobile app is Riot.im. If that in itself is enough to be used as evidence against an innocent person, then the party doing the accusing is clearly comfortable with much more underhand techniques and it hardly matters.
Some lazily searched synonyms for groups of people which would fit the criteria of being more closely aligned include:
pack, mob, crowd, crew, gathering, rabble, syndicate, family, gang
Most of those have some negative connotations in the right (or should that be wrong) context. It's depressing to think about a chilling-esque effect on something as mundane as a chat app name.
If a country has a jury system then it's not just about the authorities but their ability to convince people. A random juror will sure find someone having an app named "Riot" as indicating that they wanted to participate in a riot. In practice, that means the defendant needs to provide proof that the app is innocent rather than the prosecutor providing proof that it's not.
I guess you are lucky that you don't live here then. At the moment, just seeing the Telegram icon on the home screen will result in police scrutinising you more. Having something called "Riot" on your phone when people are currently being accused of Rioting for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time is just a liability. This is especially true with the new National Security Law which is being past imminently now.
It's not about evidence, per se, but about normalization. People from all walks of life might find a need for it in HK, and it's easier to convince someone to download an app they haven't heard of if it's called "Messages" or something than "Riot".
I mean, branding matters. Discord has one of the best voice chat implementations, but asking my coworkers to use it feels a bit iffy just because it has gaming-focused branding.
My argument is nothing to do with political correctness or the current cancel culture, which I shall not express an opinion on.
I'm just saying that if I am arrested and at the trial it is stated that "xyz has an app called Riot which she used for coordinating illegal gatherings", some people in the jury may understand this as proof of intent. This is especially true in a multilingual society where the app name will be translated into Chinese for the benefit of the jury.
This is why I would not use an app called Riot in Hong Kong. If you are unable to understand or emphasize with our situation then you will indeed keep arguing against me and there's nothing I can say to convince you.
This is the first I've seen branding considerations described as "chilling".
Your definition of that word seems absurdly broad. Is it "chilling" that Coca-Cola can't name a soda "Rebel Red" because it would remind people of the Confederacy?
Or is it just that brands have to be pretty tame and appeal to the lowest common denominator, and issues of free speech are secondary to people actually liking the brand?
Who is trying to make ideological points through their brand anyway? And what point is "Riot.im" making that society is now losing?
Good! I always thought it was a stupid name as it was associated with violence. I would mostly view the term in a negative light. Why use it for an app you're proud of?
I would object to it being called Matrix though as it's only one of the many Matrix clients. It's already becoming too major IMO :) This is probably a result of most Matrix development being done by Modular, but it should remain a multi-client network as that's one of its strengths.
They already called it Vector before, not sure what was wrong with that. Was a much better name IMO. Strong link with the name of the Matrix network.
Yeah but consider other brands that are mainstream now. They sound kind of stupid too..
I mean.. Google? Yahoo? Go Daddy? Duck Duck Go?
Really I wonder how these made it past initial adoption sometimes :) I think the name is not so important as long as it doesn't have a negative context. It's more about the overall brand identity. And now they're household names.
Do they have a new name or was the purpose of this announcement so The Deciders can review suggestions on Hacker News and decide which is the best name for the project going forward? :-)
I think this is very good news: it strikes me that the platform is maturing to the point that it's going to be around for a very, very long time and having a "good name" is part of that. Along with OBS it seems that the app soon to be formerly known as Riot/Matrix became a critical tool during the quarantine and will be even more so if there's an encore quarantine this fall or winter.
> However, we are extremely confident that now is the right time to fix the name. We’re in the process of landing gigantic improvements to Riot’s user experience and usability which will unrecognisably improve the app. So unrecognisably, in fact, that we can shed our skin and celebrate our long-awaited transition into being a truly mainstream-usable app.
I can’t wait to see what they come up with on the name and the improvements in the user experience. I don’t know anyone in my circles using Riot/Matrix, and I’ve been hesitant to push it aggressively because the UI on mobile isn’t that great compared to the more popular apps. In some ways, this will be good riddance to the phone number based centralized platforms.
I didn't know what "certain large games company" prevented a trademark on Riot. A Wikipedia search seems to suggest this company is large (I haven't heard of them, tbh): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_Games
I'm curious what name they have or will pick. I've been using Riot for around a year now, it's great!
Riot makes league of legends, the biggest esport game in the world for quite a while now. They're a giant company, getting into a legal battle with them would not be fun
riot is huge and video games is a huge market for instant messengers - there's a lot of overlap there. i'm honestly surprised that it hasn't gone beyond riot games blocking riot.im's trademark applications and progressed to riot games suing for trademark violation.
So, we're not going to go back to Vector (although it has a very special place in our hearts :). It was a great name for a techie-focused comms client (and I'm not surprised HN likes the name :D), but feedback was pretty unanimous that it was too techie for a more general-purpose audience.
Also, heads up that we consciously did not optimise for a made-up name like WhatsApp or similar. Just as Matrix (and Riot, for that matter) has ended up with high search engine scores, we believe the project is strong enough to support us borrowing an existing dictionary word. If nothing else, it'd be consistent with Matrix ;P
So, apologies in advance to anyone who's hoping Riot will end up being called Sporkle or Vroomio or Flibblr... :)
What about 'Eigen'? There only seems to be a C++ library of that name yet, so not too much overlap. And I like its nerdy implication of 'yes, we are only one Matrix client, but we strive to be an important one' ;)
Yeah it was an excellent name. Strong link with the "matrix" network and no weird associations with violence like Riot.
I always assumed it was some trademark crap that made them drop the name Vector but I don't think they ever communicated the reason. It's very hard to find some name that's not trademarked by someone somewhere, or even a close resemblance to it.
Consider the eelo Android distribution, they had to change because one tiny consulting company had a trademark for something resembling it (not even the same name, and not the same industry at all!)
ITT: people who disagree because searches for "vector" and "matrix" is going to be overly encumbered with mathematical references because they don't understand how SEO works.
Only a single search engine hit on the first page resolves in the mathematical definition of matrix. The others include the movie franchise, a hair products company, several dictionary pages, a computer warehouse, a vehicle tracking device, and several other non-math refrences to the word matrix. On google, riot.im shows up at #26 for me.
No, both Vector and Matrix are terms too widely used in computing to be considered good names, makes it harder to search for without getting results about linear algebra. A better name would be something unique (or at the very least orthogonal to anything directly computer-related) in some way.
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...
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I get that the environment is heterogeneous. It just felt a bit too lacking in clear branding compared to something like Signal.
“Is that Matrix?”
“Yes! Although technically matrix is the protocol. This is FluffyChat connected to my local HackerSpace’s Matrix instance.”
So I'm afraid the whole "Is that Matrix?", "Yes, I'm using FluffyChat/Riot/Whatever to connect to Matrix" conversation is still going to be there. Just like someone might say "ooh, what Web Browser is that?". This much is a feature, not a bug.
If I could wave a magic wand, formatting matrix usernames as “alice@alice.com” instead of “@alice:alice.com” feels like a similar opportunity to make things more friendly to newcomers.
It’s these little things that make a huge difference to success. TL=com/ORG=ycombinator/HOST=news addressing vs news.ycombinator.com. Or calling Outlook an “MUA” instead of just saying it’s a “mail client”.
It’s technically correct. Some people say that technically correct is the best kind of correct, but often it feels like the most convincing strategy is the one where you don’t need to add explanation or bon mots to win over opinion — people can just see it’s right.
I’m surprised that Matrix didn’t think they would benefit from trying to become well known as Matrix first, then diversify into FluffyChat etc second.
I mean I don't think the browser analogy is that great, it seems more the exception than the rule. Eg most IRC clients have the word IRC in them, or something very close (eg mIRC, irssi, etc). Most email clients have the word "mail" in them. Torrent clients, same. Why shouldn't a Matrix client have the word Matrix in it?
Just call it iMatrix or uMatrix or something like that, and you're removing a lot of confusion. If mIRC and uTorrent and Gmail can get away with that, so can you.
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If they had called FluffyMail they probably wouldn't be the juggernaut they are today.
Branding matters.
That’s because swathes of people simply conflate the two. To a lot of people the icon for their web browser may as well just be called “The Internet”. I’ve heard that some single digit percentage of Google searches are people searching for Facebook.
I think you give too much credit to the level of technical knowledge of the average person.
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Hope the new name is either more abstract or closely aligned to what the software actually does.
Some lazily searched synonyms for groups of people which would fit the criteria of being more closely aligned include:
pack, mob, crowd, crew, gathering, rabble, syndicate, family, gang
Most of those have some negative connotations in the right (or should that be wrong) context. It's depressing to think about a chilling-esque effect on something as mundane as a chat app name.
I mean, branding matters. Discord has one of the best voice chat implementations, but asking my coworkers to use it feels a bit iffy just because it has gaming-focused branding.
I'm just saying that if I am arrested and at the trial it is stated that "xyz has an app called Riot which she used for coordinating illegal gatherings", some people in the jury may understand this as proof of intent. This is especially true in a multilingual society where the app name will be translated into Chinese for the benefit of the jury.
This is why I would not use an app called Riot in Hong Kong. If you are unable to understand or emphasize with our situation then you will indeed keep arguing against me and there's nothing I can say to convince you.
Your definition of that word seems absurdly broad. Is it "chilling" that Coca-Cola can't name a soda "Rebel Red" because it would remind people of the Confederacy?
Or is it just that brands have to be pretty tame and appeal to the lowest common denominator, and issues of free speech are secondary to people actually liking the brand?
Who is trying to make ideological points through their brand anyway? And what point is "Riot.im" making that society is now losing?
I would object to it being called Matrix though as it's only one of the many Matrix clients. It's already becoming too major IMO :) This is probably a result of most Matrix development being done by Modular, but it should remain a multi-client network as that's one of its strengths.
They already called it Vector before, not sure what was wrong with that. Was a much better name IMO. Strong link with the name of the Matrix network.
Anyway I wonder what the new name is.
Something like MatrixClient though...?
Shares the first two letters with "Riot". Make some funny "crossed out the "ot" with an "x"" logos for the transition.
I mean.. Google? Yahoo? Go Daddy? Duck Duck Go?
Really I wonder how these made it past initial adoption sometimes :) I think the name is not so important as long as it doesn't have a negative context. It's more about the overall brand identity. And now they're household names.
I think this is very good news: it strikes me that the platform is maturing to the point that it's going to be around for a very, very long time and having a "good name" is part of that. Along with OBS it seems that the app soon to be formerly known as Riot/Matrix became a critical tool during the quarantine and will be even more so if there's an encore quarantine this fall or winter.
I can’t wait to see what they come up with on the name and the improvements in the user experience. I don’t know anyone in my circles using Riot/Matrix, and I’ve been hesitant to push it aggressively because the UI on mobile isn’t that great compared to the more popular apps. In some ways, this will be good riddance to the phone number based centralized platforms.
I'm curious what name they have or will pick. I've been using Riot for around a year now, it's great!
Also, heads up that we consciously did not optimise for a made-up name like WhatsApp or similar. Just as Matrix (and Riot, for that matter) has ended up with high search engine scores, we believe the project is strong enough to support us borrowing an existing dictionary word. If nothing else, it'd be consistent with Matrix ;P
So, apologies in advance to anyone who's hoping Riot will end up being called Sporkle or Vroomio or Flibblr... :)
I always assumed it was some trademark crap that made them drop the name Vector but I don't think they ever communicated the reason. It's very hard to find some name that's not trademarked by someone somewhere, or even a close resemblance to it.
Consider the eelo Android distribution, they had to change because one tiny consulting company had a trademark for something resembling it (not even the same name, and not the same industry at all!)
Only a single search engine hit on the first page resolves in the mathematical definition of matrix. The others include the movie franchise, a hair products company, several dictionary pages, a computer warehouse, a vehicle tracking device, and several other non-math refrences to the word matrix. On google, riot.im shows up at #26 for me.
Vector.im already seems to be the parent organization of Riot.im, so it might be confusing.
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...
Feel transparent and understandable. I am fine with a teasing like this.