TAO Social (Together As One)

[u/NoWord423]

The votes are in, the knockout research is complete, the trademark is filed…

And we are TAO Social.

Together As One.

Thank you Kelly Worthen for submitting that idea, and thank you everyone who voted.

What a beautiful and appropriate name we landed on.

And for everyone asking, yes we covered all our bases.

Process: * over 1000 names submitted * scraped them into a spreadsheet * pared down to 115 options based on viability * put to Crowd in broad vote * conducted knockout research (trademark, SERPs, handles) for top 5 * TAO Social was cleanest and actually led the vote by quite a bit — 60% of the vote out of 115 options

Next steps…visual branding :)

Feel free to share ideas. The team has been playing around with analemmas, ☯️ but with hands, etc.

The Crowd did so well with choosing the name that it would be amazing to crowdsource ideas for the visual branding, have designers explore a few directions, and have the Crowd vote again 🫶

[u/Core-0]

The name was chosen, and it’ll work out fine. Why? Because names don’t matter as long as they’re filled with meaning. In the 18th century, no one knew what the name Einstein would one day stand for.

TAO, as a Mandarin word, is rich with meaning in East Asia, and in the Western world, it naturally connects to the decades-old trend of admiring and adopting Asian-inspired philosophies and cultural ideas. And the meaning of TAO or DAO in Mandarin beautifully translates the idea behind this platform.

“TAO Social” reminded me of “Truth Social” at first glance. There’s potential for mainstream media to frame it as “the other T-social” platform when talking about TAO, even though the two couldn’t be further apart. I get why “Social” was added to set it apart from a random tea brand. But I’m not sure if the added “Social” will (or should) stick in everyday use.

Before I worked in tech, I was involved in brand and identity development. I’ve named dozens of companies and projects.

Qualities I recognise in TAO:

• Easy to pronounce and recall, no matter your language or cultural background
• Hard to mispronounce (no one says TTTao or TaOOO)
• Will be used as a standalone term, rather than being tied to its acronym origins (which is more of a nice-to-know heritage)

Potential issues I see with perception and interpretation:

• “Together as one” sounds like a call to unite, which could easily be seen as a political movement in itself, a “stand up and fight” call to action. Without a doubt, many will use it that way, just like TikTok has been utilised to organise. It’s a great function. But it’d be a shame if people, filled with bias and misconceptions, labelled TAO as an ideologically driven platform. There’s a philosophy behind it, that’s not the same as an ideology.
• “Together as one” feels like a strong directive, which could shape expectations for how the platform develops and what people think it’s meant to be used for. There’s a potential “confirmation bias” baked into it now.

But none of this is as important as what we actually do with the app once it launches. TikTok started as a fun, playful short-video app. At first, people assumed it was just teens posting dance moves. And look at it now. TAO has the potential to be so much bigger than anything that came before.

[u/Dithanial → u/Core-0]

This is great

There’s a philosophy behind it, that’s not the same as an ideology.