This is pretty amazing, but I wish they picked a better name for it. I have a feeling that a good amount of people will dismiss it just because of the name.
(The name even has nothing to do with chat; originally WhatsApp was a way to share your "current status"; "WhatsApp" sounds like "what's up?".)
"BirdyChat" just sounds childish.
Maybe I'm in the minority, who knows, but project names are important. I've seen so many posts of people dismissing projects just because of the name...
I agree - "Birdy" is the name used with infants when talking about birds, or is a bird toy that photographers use to distract people ... which is a bit too close to the truth, perhaps.
To me it also suggests 'a toy version of Twitter'; and Twitter already had enough negativity around it for me.
At one point in the recent past there was a fork of GIMP named "Glimpse," yet weren't a sudden influx of users who were waiting for a more polite name.
BUT, lack of users might just be that it's too late, now. People use web-based tools like Figma, I wouldn't think a lot of people are looking for a Photoshop alternative.
We're missing the last part of this quadrant with a Krita-like app that has great UX but a bad name, but the preponderance of the evidence thus far tells me that it is more likely than not that the name didn't matter, or at the very least that the UX definitely did matter while the name might not have.
The truth is that 15 years ago, "tweet" was seen as a joke by those who weren't extremely online. It didn't stop Twitter from becoming a desirable place to socialize, at least for a time. If the internet made "tweet" happen, people can get used to any weird nomenclature.
Forgejo is even worse in that regard. I live in Europe, speak 5 languages, and still have to think to remember the proper pronunciation every time.
It's much harder to get people on board with yet another messenger app when they forget the name 5 minutes later.
Specially if you go to the homepage and they're trying to market it as a work too.. If I went to my boss and tried to make the case that we should move all of our encrypted communication from Whatsapp to something called BirdyChat they would laugh at me and dismiss the idea.
That might just be me, not sure.
It looks like it's focused on business but its name sounds childish. If I mentioned that in a corporate meeting people would just laugh at me, I don't think it helps their case.