There are only 676 unique 2 letter pairs or 17.5k 3 letter letter initial triplets, and initials aren’t evenly distributed so there’s a ton of non-uniqueness in that approach for a platform with millions of users.
> there’s a ton of non-uniqueness in that approach for a platform with millions of users
Sure but context is everything.
Chances are millions of users aren't all posting in the same thread / post / chat room / etc. at once. There might only be a few dozen or even hundreds of them, and the odds of hitting 2 people with the same name + similar color are really low then. Plus on top of that, some users will have custom avatars they've uploaded to make the sample size even less for running into a collision.
Google also happens to use the random color + first initial pattern too and they have over a billion users. It works, even in a busy Google Doc.
It absolutely is. Thankfully we have 200 billion combinations we don't have to use while still covering every person in the world for the next hundreds years or so.
