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Comment by cutler | Hacker News Reader

Rethink the name. Seriously.

Kinda too late, it's a 10 year old project. Besides, scuttlebutt is the name of the water barrel on a ship, and is synonymous with gossip. As a gossip protocol originally written by someone who lives on a ship, I think it's pretty fitting.

This matters little. The majority of potential users live on land and take water from a tap. The subtlety if the naming is lost for them. But the schoolchild-level silliness of it persists and repels.

I think I understand the weird comments about the name now: you're thinking it has something to do with "derriere". But it doesn't, because the people who came up with the name would never have thought of that. Instead they'd have called it "scuttlearse".

> "The name, Scuttlebutt, came from sea-slang for gossip. Basically, like a watercooler on a ship, where sailors and pirates go have a yarn." [0]

Personally, I respect the effort to stand out in the sea (get it?) of social platforms.

[0] https://scuttlebutt.nz/about/

Why? If someone will not use an app because it has a silly sounding name, or because they're so immature that "butt" is objectionable to them, I'm happy not to have them bring that attitude into a social space I'm part of.

That's fine, but incompatible with popularity.

All people are rather different. No matter who you are, the art of popularity is the art of attracting people who are unlike you. Just because most people are unlike you, and unlike each other. Yes, this assumes removing some nice edginess, and appearing slightly generic.

The whole design of the protocol is anathema to popularity. It's based around syncing posts with users you are in physical proximity to. I doubt the cute name is what's going to hold it back from mainstream adoption.

You're already on a social space with plenty of people who won't use it because it has a silly name

And there are many people here whom I am happy not to have to interact with anywhere else. :)

Yeah it should be something serious like The Face Book or Twitter or Tumblr or Orkut or X or something!!

Scuttlebutt in america is a very common word used to describe gossip.

I love the parallelism between 'scuttlebutt' and 'water cooler talk' .. they both describe gossip and they are both named for people standing around a source of drinking water telling stories.

I LOVE the name. What's the problem?

I love it too but I could see it hurting some adoption, unless it goes the other way. Scuttlebut is intriguing and a sticky name…

Man, I disagree.

It's ok, the project never took off. Big barrier to entry, clunky to use, being superseded by better decentralized approaches.

It's a fair comment. The name isn't great.

Fortunately scuttlebutt is the protocol, which I guess is fine.

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