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Comment by jsherwani | Hacker News Reader

Just to address the naming issue — we (myself and the other engineer, that comprise the entire Screen team) honestly have not used GNU Screen for more than 5 years, and didn’t even remember it existed until today’s post. I’m sorry for the oversight, but this is the point of a public beta — to help us unearth issues we may have overlooked ourselves!

I’m open to finding a new name — in fact, a few days ago, I had reached out to Slack to see if they’d be open to letting us use the Screenhero name since they’re not using it. If that doesn’t work out, and and there’s still significant distaste for the name, we’ll change it. 99.9% of the time we’ve spent to get here has been on the product, getting it to work on all the platforms it supports, and making sure it’s performant and fast. The 0.01% of time we’ve spent on getting our name and domain is something I’m happy to revisit before our GA release.

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The name is great, as is the slack command /screen, just keep using it. Saying this as a user of GNU Screen. It's OK, approximately nobody is going to be confused by this in the real world.

I first expected a "screen -x" tutorial (which attaches multiple clients to the same session; screen sharing, if you will) when skimming HN titles, but yeah the "by the cofounder of X" tipped me off when I read a little closer. Going to be hard to google, though. For reasons unrelated to GNU screen, I dislike product names that appear in a dictionary with the most common words. Not saying that /screen would be a bad Slack alias or whatever, so long as that isn't taken why not, but as a product name there might be a nice thing to tack on that you can abbreviate to Screen but still allows you to google for the right thing or clarify when someone is confused.

> approximately nobody is going to be confused by this in the real world.

Do you really think nobody is going to be confused when you tell them to use "Screen"?

"I'm staring at my screen right now, what do you mean?"

"It's the name of an app".

If people have to introduce your app as "use the app called Screen", then it's a bad name. Think Viber, Skype, Whatsapp, Colgate, Facebook.

The name is too generic. Think searchability.

What was that product name? Screenmaster screenlord turboscreen are all more likely to get potential customers to remember and find you.

It’s a terrible name as is.

Perhaps Slack was a terrible name then, maybe Zoom was also extremely generic as well and couldn't get any users or customers to find them. /s

All your other suggestions are even more horrific, you might as well call it TurboScreenMaster 3000.

'Screen' and 'Screen Inc' is fine as it is.

I don't know if I'm a weirdo but I am so interested in learning about TurboScreenMaster 3000, but it needs to be inherently at least as good as BattleChess 3000 and Class of 3000

When I have issues like this when searching my next search is usually "slack chat" or "zoom video." Now that they're popular, you don't need these qualifiers. What would someone add to "screen"? "screen sharing"?

Forget GNU Screen, we recently launched a professional video player called Screen. Check it out!

https://videovillage.co/screen/

Looks great! :D

This is a gorgeous app. Love seeing good, native macOS development.

Don't bother, the people who you are going to sell this product to have never heard of the GNU utility and they do not care the least about it. You'll be just fine.

And if you do change, don't change to Windows.

You are right, it is odd (at least I think of it is), people don't really care about the name, though to be fair some people really think it is important, .com is so important, ok it is true for you, but reality is nobody cares, just focus on the product capabilties.

Totally agree. The people who have heard of GNU screen will learn the difference and those that haven't are blissfully unaware.

One thing I hated with GNU screen was how hard it was to google. I knew there was a certain fix for a special edge-case but the generic name made it hard to search for.

This project don't even have the GNU keyword to help.

I guess this is an aspect where search engines are much better today, to get the context. But still, the issue remains.

What about the remaining 0.09% ? ;)

I see what you did there ;)

Good catch! Hopefully our product is better than my math :D

Congratulations on the launch! The product page looks great as does the native Mac app.

Regarding the name / domain name i wanted to let you know that www.BrowserMeeting.com is available.

I was holding on to this domain for a future screen sharing & web browser based virtual meeting project.

If you or any HN readers are looking for a category killer keyword rich premium .com that is PERFECT for a "Browser Meeting" project please send an email to: sales AT browsermeeting.com

As long as you don't name it tmux.

Any chance you can allow custom integrations. Please if there is a possibility I would like to get in touch with you.

How about Skreen? Or some other misspelling? That’ll solve the searchability issue.

I don't see how the two will conflict. I wouldn't change anything.

It’s a common and disappointing trope on HN to complain about the name of something when someone shares something new here. Take note and move on and if it becomes an issue later, address it then.

call it "screeny" as in "lets get screeny RN"

What about Screened?

Screend?

Scr33n?

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