3 ms·

I bet we'd be exactly as successful with a better name. Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant

by swies 15y ago

I bet we'd be exactly as successful with a better name. Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? I'm sure you could tank a product with an offensive name or something that required weird unicode characters. But I think it's only worth getting a passing grade on the name and then going for an A+ on the product. I guess the argument is that if you're right on the margin a better name could tip you into winning. But I'd already consider a product a failure if it only gets to that middle ground on its own. If the name makes a difference I'd say you're not working on the right sort of problem.

herval 15y ago
It does make a difference for people: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/05/names_really_do.html http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007... My hunch is that it also makes a difference for products, but I don't have any data on that...
name123 15y ago
> Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? YouTube. What differentiated YouTube from all the other video sharing sites? A good name and logo.
- beambot 15y ago
  I've got a hunch that there was a little more to it than just "a good name and logo."
  - dilap 15y ago
    For one, they tried hard to support every possible video format for upload (as opposed to, e.g., Google Video, which was much pickier about what it would accept). In general, they nailed the "just make it work" factor. (Subjectively, I remember YouTube being the first site that made me think, "wow! video on the internet! it works!". Ironically enough, this is no longer really true -- half the time YT starts buffering part way through the video (sometimes never to go finish w/o a full page refresh), & the other half the time you get a disruptive pop-up covering 20% of the screen. Bah.)
mmatants 15y ago
For any product, the name is part of the "user story", although to a wildly different degree. In your case, the user story starts with "Joe finds and downloads your software". And the argument here, really, is how effectively "Ninite" as a name serves that part of the story. The linked post seems to think it fails that step. You disagree. I am not offering a conclusion to that argument, but just wanted to position the name debate in a less vague way.
ig1 15y ago
I believe DailyBurn used to be called Gyminee until A/B testing showed a significant difference in conversion rate. Pepsi Max built a whole market out of guys who didn't want to be seen asking for a "diet" soda.

by swies 15y ago

herval 15y ago

It does make a difference for people: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007/05/names_really_do.html http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2007... My hunch is that it also makes a difference for products, but I don't have any data on that...

name123 15y ago

> Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? YouTube. What differentiated YouTube from all the other video sharing sites? A good name and logo.

beambot 15y ago
I've got a hunch that there was a little more to it than just "a good name and logo."
- dilap 15y ago
  For one, they tried hard to support every possible video format for upload (as opposed to, e.g., Google Video, which was much pickier about what it would accept). In general, they nailed the "just make it work" factor. (Subjectively, I remember YouTube being the first site that made me think, "wow! video on the internet! it works!". Ironically enough, this is no longer really true -- half the time YT starts buffering part way through the video (sometimes never to go finish w/o a full page refresh), & the other half the time you get a disruptive pop-up covering 20% of the screen. Bah.)

mmatants 15y ago

For any product, the name is part of the "user story", although to a wildly different degree. In your case, the user story starts with "Joe finds and downloads your software". And the argument here, really, is how effectively "Ninite" as a name serves that part of the story. The linked post seems to think it fails that step. You disagree. I am not offering a conclusion to that argument, but just wanted to position the name debate in a less vague way.

ig1 15y ago

I believe DailyBurn used to be called Gyminee until A/B testing showed a significant difference in conversion rate. Pepsi Max built a whole market out of guys who didn't want to be seen asking for a "diet" soda.