I remember complaining the “iPad” sounded like a menstrual product. Seemed to do fine.

This reminds me of the super old joke "iPod, iPad, iPaid"

The i-line of products was already well known by the general public at the time to be synonymous with Apple. iTunes, iPod, iPhone ... those were normal english words prefixed with an "i". People wonder why Apple didn't call their watch the iWatch. This is a much different thing with "mastrodon". It's not a word people are familiar with, has enough syllables to sound funny, and gets combined with other nonsense words people aren't familiar with. Compare that with something like youtube subscribers, posters, tweets, etc. which are all basic words. Mastrodon's situation is that it reeks of being engineer designed. That's not a good thing if your goal is to reach a mainstream audience.

I think you're skipping past the word "pad" which is what people thought was weird, not the I.

Toot is as much a basic word as tweet, I think you are just reflecting your own bias towards words from products you already know.

The Wii did fine too.

iBrator

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4-ReZh0sQw

"pad" without the "i" was already accepted as a term for something you write on e.g., "pen and pad"

I'm pretty confident that you can ask someone for a pad for writing, without thinking at all about hygiene products, but you can't even hear the toot of a horn without thinking of a fart.

All the better; if the cool people can’t adopt a social network due its quirky names they’re not the kind of people I want I my timeline anyway.

Posts are just call 'posts' in the latest versions of the software.

tweet it louder, bird!

So what? It doesn’t need to be mainstream. It’s not built for exploitation of the user base, so it doesn’t need to sell the idea that everyone needs to be there.

I like the name Mastodon!

masto- : a combining form meaning “breast,” used in the formation of compound words: mastopathy.

It sounds like the sister site of Phallodon.

-Don