Modernize branding (name & icon)

[aadilayub]

Cawbird is probably my favourite Twitter app, and I'm really looking forward to seeing it modernized with GTK4 & libadwaita. The only thing that has held me back from using it very often is its branding - both the icon and name.

It would be great if along with this rewrite a new name and icon could be minted for the app.

I don't have the skills to craft a new icon for it, but I'd be happy to help brainstorm new names for it. Ideally the name would conform to GNOME's App Naming Guidelines.

[aadilayub]

Names of common bird species are a natural starting point:

• Nightingale
• Canary
• Pelican
• Hummingbird
• Raven

[IBBoard]

Shortform and Micro-Post fit the micro-blogging idea.

Threaded could work, but there's probably a lot of interpretations. And how often do people thread conversations rather than just post lots of one-off messages?

I can see where you're going with Shout and Broadcast, but they're probably better for streaming apps 🙂

Is "Status" too short and generic? There was Status.net, which is now Identi.ca. And "status update" redirects to the microblogging page on Wikipedia.

[IBBoard]

Mastodon is based on ActivityPub. But "Activity" probably makes people think of activity trackers or the Gnome Activity Journal.

We could go Micro-Blogger or Micro-Social.

I don't know how any of these could be turned into icons, though!

[aadilayub]

I do feel status is a bit too generic, since you can post statuses on Facebook too. I think Microblogger could be a really good descriptive name. My only concern is that it may be misconstrued as a client for micro.blog...

but I don't think it's a huge concern as the concept of microblogging is much more popular than the micro.blog network

[IBBoard]

I wasn't even aware that micro.blog existed! It's definitely in the realms of having web.server and email.client and complaining that people make their own "web server" and "email client" apps.

As for Status, you can post a status to other services like Facebook, but we don't have to support all status locations and my web host posts statuses about the servers so "Status" no tool is going to cover all forms of "status".

[aadilayub]

Thinking about it again after a while - I think Microblogger is the best name out of the options listed so far.

[CodedOre]

I also already got the mention from the GNOME Design Team that the icon could need an update.
So, I was already thinking about an updated icon.

However, I think this should be rather discussed with @IBBoard, especially the thing with changing the name.

Other than that, should we agree on updating these I think we can ask the Design Team for help as well.

[CodedOre]

@IBBoard, since you mentioned that we need to consider a renaming in IBBoard/cawbird#452, does this implies that you would want to change the name for Cawbird 2.0?

Not really sure how I should interpret your sentence there.

[IBBoard]

If we're moving closer to the Gnome circle with Adwaita and appearing in "This Week in Gnome" then I think it's worth considering a new name that fits better with the naming guidelines. As there's little/no common code then it's effectively only Cawbird by spiritual lineage rather than code heritage.

It might be that we can't come up with anything better. But it might be that we can find a more suitable cross-platform name, at which point the new icon is great but won't get as much use 🙂

[IBBoard]

I don't know if it's worth revisiting this.

Since Twitter banned third-party clients, NewCaw is now only going to support Mastodon. We could rename to something more Mastodon-y. But it's not mandatory, and all of the best names have gone.

Or we could just keep with Cawbird for familiarity, even though it's not themed for the platform.

[aadilayub]

There are already a couple of mastodon themed linux clients:

• Tootle
• Tooth
• Tokodon
• Toot

I think it'd be nice if the app name was less specific to Mastodon and more about microblogging on the fediverse.
Some potential names in that theme:

• Microverse (perhaps too similar to metaverse)
• Microblogger
• Shortform
• Micro-post
• Fedipost
• miniblog
• Fedistream

I noticed some clients use the names of brass wind instruments (after the "toot" sound). Some names in that theme:

• Trumpet
• Trombone
• Euphonium

Some more mastodon-y names:

• Tooter
• Tootr
• Pachyderm