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

[Ethan Blanton]

Casey Ho spake unto us the following wisdom:
> 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.

This is a good goal.  I don't think "universal IM" is it, though.

> "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.

I don't think anyone actually uses that term.  Those graphs are
relative, and I think those graphs indicate that approximately no one
searches for *any* of those terms.  Viz:

http://www.google.com/trends?q=universal+im%2C+pidgin%2C+gaim

> 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.

That doesn't mean it isn't a buzzword.  It is certainly very buzzword-y.

I think, unless some developers come out in support of it who haven't
spoken up yet, that consensus seems to be that we don't like
"universal IM", and it shouldn't be used.

Ethan

-- 
The laws that forbid the carrying of arms are laws [that have no remedy
for evils].  They disarm only those who are neither inclined nor
determined to commit crimes.
		-- Cesare Beccaria, "On Crimes and Punishments", 1764
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