Of tubes and telegrams: The names of social media platforms and messenger services

Abstract

Although names play a crucial role in the communication of products, services and companies and their acceptance by the public, virtually no research findings are available to date about the naming strategies used by social media platforms and messenger services. This article explores the naming strategies of the most successful social media platforms and messenger services in terms of the numbers of their users worldwide. For this purpose, 17 brand names were analysed with the help of a taxonomy of brand names that is used in marketing practice. Furthermore, etymological and semantic aspects of the brand names are examined. One finding is that most of the brands use fanciful names, which can best be protected. Additionally, this study highlights the fact that many of the social media platforms and messenger services contain hints to prior media forms in their names. But why do they use these semantically retro references? This study adopts different approaches (remediation, skeuomorphism, invented tradition) to illuminate this retro-naming strategy.