You might say this is a superficial criticism, but I think naming is important when it comes to social appeal. At least, it becomes important when the naming has gone so horribly wrong.
If they’re changing course there might be hope yet.
"Your fart was shared by 230 of your followers."
"This fart is NSFW"
"This fart has been promoted"
"Pin this fart to the top of your feed"
It does seem like a poor choice of words. Tweeting on the other hand didn't have a negative connotation until Twitter became what it is today and gave it a negative connotation.
There are common expressions such as "chatting shit" for unverified speculation or "shooting the shit" to mean talking about nothing and everything.
I suspect most of the content on Mastodon, like twitter, is shit. The choice of words seems appropriate.
A hilariously bad name if your humor is like that of a child. (Mine is)
Though when primed with the word Mastodon, I did think of the large trunk and a cartoon-like trumpeting of that trunk. Right after thinking how my grandmother would call her farts toots.
"When the argument that the Christian is without the law and above the law doesn’t help, I instantly chase him away with a fart."
When you're naming a thing you should be careful and deliberate in your process - generally coincidences will work against you, though you might get lucky and pull a Kit-Kat[1].
1. https://thediplomat.com/2019/08/the-kit-kat-in-japan-a-trans...
But it mostly doesn't matter whether they called it "Toots" or "Posts" (or Japanese localization of "Toots", which is what I get), since I mostly don't pay any attention to the UI elements after I have gotten used to it. It might make a difference for acquiring new users, but I don't get the feeling that rapidly growing the network is a priority for Mastodon.
"Toot" is cutesy and kind of lame, more of the usual I'd expect from the Free Software world. But I don't love the idea of changing it to "posts". I'd rather they find a different clever name.
Pretty sure it's a pun for the French `tout suite` -- "right now / ASAP". Pretty clever actually given how much value people place on immediacy on social media...
Looking at you, Go...
I wish they would be wise and rebrand too.
However, Duck is rather generic-sounding and will require $$$ in ad-spend to get name recall. Even though it's awkward, DuckDuckGo is certainly memorable, sometimes that works in a product's favour.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/12/18137369/duckduckgo-duck...
Will Biden toot on Mastodon one day? Will he toot at Kamala Harris?
"Toot" also makes Mastodon look like a cheap knockoff of Twitter that wanted to sound like Twitter without infringing on any trademarks.