Comment by stoicShell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stoicShell | Hacker News Reader

As a non-native English speaker I'm quite surprised at the use of the word "CRM" for “children of all your friends // your brother // your grand mother”

Customers, seriously? Can someone educate me on this particular use of the terms? (to me it was only viable in business situations)

Regardless of the second, third meaning of "customer" in English, I'm afraid the word just won't fly in e.g. Western Europe where it only has 1 meaning (someone who pays you for a service), and people often deplore that business, money distort relationships... It's just a cultural mistake to call Monica a CRM over there. It would be like calling a software "union organizer" to manage your -personal- group of friends in the US... not exactly a "neutral" term, nor one remotely related to "friends". Lots of subtexts in some words, translations not 1:1.

PS to authors of Monica: I can help with a French translation ;-)

"Customer" has the same connotations in US English to native speakers. You aren't missing anything, and nobody would call their friends "customers."

But the software is using "CRM" as a term with its own meaning. It's kind of like "MP3" - the M and P come from "MPEG," where they stand for "motion picture." But really, "MP3" means "audio format 3 from the MPEG standard." Nobody thinks that MP3 users are calling audio files "motion pictures."

Got it, thanks.

It's very true that common acronyms tend to get a life of their own, become words in and of themselves, even re-write their meaning — as poster below astutely suggested 'CRM' could mean "contacts" RM in this context.

Here, "CRM" is playing off of the concept, rather than the literal meaning.

A CRM in practice is a social relationship management tool. So, calling something like this a "CRM" is meant to show people what the tool is used for using a familiar term.

It's a little odd, but I understand what they're getting at.

Perhaps in this case we could say the acronym is more of a "contact relationship management"

You might just have named the concept upon which Monica bases.

- meta: it's interesting because having a word somehow 'creates' a concept in our minds, easier to think of and discuss I guess.

- topic: the concept is truly interesting, and you 'get it' when reading Monica's marketing pitch for sure. But the way you name it makes it a category, and when I add up that the one feature of Facebook that even non-users still come for is Groups... somehow this all hints at the aforementioned category.

Interesting. Food for thought.

what about PRM: personal relationship manager

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