I believe Facebook’s name came from an actual thing. The company was created for college students. Many campuses, would give face books that had students and professors from the universities.
Same as Instagram or Telegram. Really, stop nitpicking the name of FOSS projects excessively. I get that they're not the best, but they're not really a dealbreaker for most of the people outside the marketing departments.
Otoh, what if we would all call it Friendi as well (just like we did with Insta? Or Fren?
"Instagram" is, at least in my opinion, about as awkward as "Friendica" to say, and has millions of users. It wins marginally on spelling, but how often does the average user write or type the full name of a site anyway?
For me it oozes cringey 2010-era hype about this newfangled buzzword "app", which also doesn't even rhyme with "up" except to the obviously non-native developers who clearly thought it did. Etc. We will agree to disagree!
Ah but even coming from a native speaker, it just flows so smoothly and feels just like saying what is arguably now the most common greeting said in English. To me it's like the word "app" is hiding itself right in the most natural greeting, the greeting also being a symbolic distillation of the app's purpose - there's an elegant, simple symmetry to it in my ears, the opposite of buzzword cringe!
But hey, opinions and assholes eh? Taste is so subjective lol. Just glad they didn't name it iWhatsApp, then we'd agree and be big mad
I agree that it is an exceptional software, perhaps the best of the Fediverse, but it has a terrible name. The reason for this name was to mark a continuity with the first potentially federated social network, namely "identi.ca"
Moreover, despite the name, it is not a really friendly software, but presents several ergonomic complexities.
Finally, I add that when I pronounce it with my dictation system, it is always transliterated as "free handicap", which is a very inclusive thing, but every time I have to correct it... 🤣
This is also why I decided to call my instance with a different name such as Poliverso, Too bad that a few months later Zuckerberg decided to launch his failed Metaverso project, which is why every time I have to explain that I did not call it that to parody the Metaverso 🤬