www: 97e4dfaf: Keyword and snippet optimizations for se...

[Casey Ho]

On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Etan Reisner
<pidgin at unreliablesource.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 04, 2008 at 04:52:27PM -0800, Casey Ho wrote:
>> People use it.
>>
>> http://www.google.com/trends?q=universal+im,+multi-protocol+im,+multi+protocol+im&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0
>
> <shudder>
>
> "Universal IM" is such a horrible phrase, I have no idea why anyone would
> want to use it. That being said that graph certainly favors it strongly,
> but could we at least keep it out of the body copy? I really, really
> dislike it, it is meaningless, wrong (we certainly don't support
> everything possible), stupid, and much too buzz-word-y for my liking.
>
> We aren't a business, we don't need to tweak everything to sell as many
> units as possible. I'm ok making style decisions even when they "hurt" our
> "bottom line" a little.
>
>    -Etan
>

I'm looking for a better term for non-developers to describe Pidgin to
one another.  This is not a "business decision" to "improve the bottom
line", and I never said it was.  I made my changes to help users
understand what the point of Pidgin is.

"Multi-protocol", while a technically correct definition, doesn't make
sense to a majority of Pidgin's users.  And the definition itself
isn't entirely clear, for example because Windows Live messenger is a
multi protocol client since it also supports Yahoo.

"Universal IM" isn't some term that I pulled out of thin air.  I first
made sure that people used the term (the first Google Trends chart),
and secondly that it's associated with Pidgin (see links at bottom).
While Pidgin doesn't support everything, it supports more than any
other client, and that's why I suspect people have been calling Pidgin
a universal client for years now.

It has meaning.  It's not a precise technical definition, but it has a
real semantic value.  And it certainly isn't a buzzword, because
people already use the term to describe Pidgin.

Want to hear a real buzzword name?  Try "ultimate im".

-Casey


http://blog.codesector.com/2007/10/14/pidgin-universal-instant-messenger/
http://windowssecrets.com/2008/09/25/07-Universal-IM-clients-link-you-to-many-systems
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Chat/Instant-Messaging/Pidgin.shtml