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Don't understand this trend. Apple has done just fine diversifying as Apple, Inc. Square, as a name, is simple and well-known, and the logo is recognizable, in
by purple_ferret 5y ago
Don't understand this trend. Apple has done just fine diversifying as Apple, Inc.
Square, as a name, is simple and well-known, and the logo is recognizable, inoffensive, and amenable for design updates.
Seems like a move to pander to Jack's new obsession (maybe he has no interest in running what Square actually works on now).
- tempestn 5y agoYep, a block is like a square, but brings to mind a blockchain. I wouldn't be at all surprised if someday soon we're reading about Block's new product, Chain.
- adamnemecek 5y agoApple is more integrated.
- kelp 5y ago> Seems like a move to pander to Jack's new obsession (maybe he has no interest in running what Square actually works on now). I suspect this has something to do with it. I had a co-worker once describe Jack as a magpie. He's usually much more interested in the new shiny thing. That was Cash App for a while. Now the blockchain stuff I guess. I haven't worked there in many years so I don't know for sure. Jack tends to hire good executives to run the boring parts of the business. Those are also the parts that tend to bankroll all the new and shiny stuff. I had a big WTF with this move, and have a similar feeling about the blockchain efforts. But I also tend towards the new and shiny, so I have a harder time faulting that.
- tdeck 5y agoSquare had been trying to do Bitcoin stuff for years. When I left in 2016 they had built accepting Bitcoin into Square's Online Store product a few years ago, because it was shiny. I was told that they got about one Bitcoin payment a week and were thinking of turning it off. I guess the popularity of BTC speculation among retail investors brought the whole thing back.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> I was told that they got about one Bitcoin payment a week and were thinking of turning it off. Accepting Bitcoin as payments has never been about facilitating payments. It's not rational to go through all the trouble of transferring Bitcoin, paying transaction fees, waiting for the transaction to clear (took over an hour when I tried it a few months ago), and then surrendering all of the protections you'd normally get when using a credit card. Accepting Bitcoin is about propelling the Bitcoin narrative: The more you can put "Bitcoin accepted here" on everyone's website, the more you can convince other people that Bitcoin is going mainstream and therefore they should be putting their money into Bitcoin as an investment (not to spend).
- selfhoster11 5y ago> and therefore they should be putting their money into Bitcoin as an investment (not to spend). I disagree with this part of the paragraph. Maybe legitimising Bitcoin was hijacked by cryptobros later on to push their own narrative, but the people who originally got into Bitcoin simply wanted to be an accepted currency for goods and services, nothing more and nothing less.
- spookthesunset 5y ago> Maybe legitimising Bitcoin was hijacked by cryptobros later on to push their own narrative, but the people who originally got into Bitcoin simply wanted to be an accepted currency for goods and services, nothing more and nothing less. I mean the "pay for starbucks using bitcoin" ship sailed, what, 10 years ago? Bitcoin is absolutely nothing more than a giant pump & dump scam. Of course pedants will say "technically it isn't a pump & dump" just like "technically it isn't a pyramid scheme"... Bitcoin might not meet the technical definition of any of those... but it is a scam none the less.
- tata71 5y agoThen why aren't the majority of the miners or large wallets selling at all-time highs?
- manojlds 5y ago> Jack tends to hire good executives to run the boring parts of the business. Those are also the parts that tend to bankroll all the new and shiny stuff. That sounds good, then? Hope you are not implying that it's a negative thing.
- kyawzazaw 5y agoApple does use different names for things like Beats and is more integrated or has different names such as iCloud instead of Apple Cloud services
- ctdonath 5y agoActually points the other way: Apple tends to preserve names, rather than obfuscating them with changes. Beats isn't now "AirPod Fast" after company acquisition, 'i'-prefix names haven't been switched to "Apple "-prefix, etc.
- eli 5y agoThe earned media from this announcement is worth an absolute fortune. Imagine you’re a marketer for a major tech company. How much would you pay to get an organic HN front page discussion of your company’s roadmap? Short term this is good PR, long term it’s about positioning the brand. If blockchain hype continues to grow, it will be powerful to have a brand closely associated with it.
- paulryanrogers 5y agoThere's a risk that blockchain and BTC in particular may taint the brand for many.
- mike_d 5y ago> How much would you pay to get an organic HN front page discussion of your company’s roadmap? Dozens of dollars! Seriously, that is the going rate for boosting an article to the HN front page (not to say it will stay on the front page, flagging and dang are quite effective).
- gkop 5y agoConsidering this article has spent hours on the front page and remains in the top 10, I don't see the point you're trying to make. Also, note organic.
- 5y ago
- mehrdada 5y agoApple Inc. used to be Apple Computer, Inc. You could argue they actually started the trend long ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3sg8b5iXO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3sg8b5iXO4
- paxys 5y agoOn the contrary, this move means that their core brand and cash cow (Square) can remain "safe" and only associated with secure payments and PoS sales rather than all their bets on crypto, blockchain, music and whatever else Jack Dorsey is cooking up.
- freewilly1040 5y agoThe cash cow is actually increasingly Cash App
- res0nat0r 5y agoSounds more like the parent holding company name change, Facebook.com is still Facebook and not changing, meta is just the parent company like Alphabet. I'm assuming the same for square.com.
- outside1234 5y agoWant to put all of the crypto BS under another brand name for when it blows up
- gkop 5y agoA block could be a 3-D square, so at least there’s this cute connection in this case, unlike Meta.
- enchiridion 5y agoFacelibrary
- kelseyfrog 5y agoUnfortunately it's blockhead[1]. I wish this was a joke. 1. https://investors.block.xyz/governance/leadership/default.aspx https://investors.block.xyz/governance/leadership/default.as...
- bee_rider 5y agoThey all did this for different reasons, right? Google, I'm not sure about. Block: because their other brands are really tied to particular things, like Square is super tied to payment processing, there's no upside to using it elsewhere. Facebook: trying to break into new markets as Facebook is hard, because everyone knows Facebook is fundamentally bad. I guess every company that rebrands has a specific reason to do so. Apple hasn't done anything to soil their name too badly, so they don't have to.
- imgabe 5y agoBlock is adding a new dimension to Square.
- kumarvvr 5y agoI guess Cube would be a natural name progression. But there are manu cube companies.
- tempestn 5y agoAnd presumably the whole point was a link to blockchain. Otherwise Cube definitely would've been more logical. Not that there was anything wrong with Square.
- deadbolt 5y agoLmao that can't be the real reason behind the change, right? Because that's fucking embarrassing.
- treyfitty 5y agoWhy is that embarrassing? I find it pretty clever from a marketing perspective.
- envp 5y agoWhat's the next iteration, hypercube?
- stevofolife 5y agoCubic square
- csmpltn 5y agoTesseract?
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI think he wants to become the biggest bitcoin/blockchain/fintech company. Probably full service contract/exchange/hodler/wallet/all-the-things.
- staticassertion 5y agoIt's so strange. Square has good branding. Why would you just drop that completely? Crypto stuff aside, changing the name of your company like this just feels insane to me.
- dannyw 5y agoCrypto companies get a few orders of magnitude the market cap of traditional finance. See Filecoin: approximately 1/100th data stored as Backblaze, approx 100x the fully diluted market cap of Backblaze, for a 10000x $ per byte stored.
- staticassertion 5y agoBut that's a scam. Square isn't a scam. They're seemingly very successful...
- fhd2 5y agoI'd argue Apple started this loooong ago. Their first few products where literally named "Apple", but then they quickly moved towards establishing independent brands for all products, starting with the Macintosh, I believe. That left their well known company name as an umbrella brand, whereas Google, Facebook et al came up with some obscure umbrella brand way late. I'm not an Apple fanboy at all, but I think this shows they had more vision than most. Most tech giants had one very focused, ridiculously successful product and tried to find meaning beyond that later. From everything I've heard around the early Apple decades, they always had this mentality of focusing on new product (lines) as their way forward. Probably to some degree because their focus is/was hardware, not software, but I don't believe that's all there is to it. They literally create new products that have the potential of making their established, more expensive products obsolete: For example the iPad.
- testmasterflex 5y agoIIRC “Apple” was a provisional last minute decision
- fhd2 5y agoI don't think the name matters, what matters is that they built the brand early on and were daring enough to build separate brands for their products. Sure, "Meta" _means_ something, but Apple (now) does, too, by association.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pfranz 5y agoApple stopped selling "Apple Computers" decades ago. They sell Macs. If someone is talking about Beats and Apple, it doesn't get confused with the computer. Apple is the parent company and Beats sells audio hardware. In 2007, they changed their name from "Apple Computer" to "Apple Inc." The same year AppleTV and the iPhone were announced. That said, Apple has some terrible branding in some areas. Is AppleTV the hardware, the subscription service, or Apple's TV app?