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> This rebranding would be a firing offense if the mastermind behind it didn’t own the company It continues to amaze me how poor branding decisions get made wh
by justin_oaks 3y ago
> This rebranding would be a firing offense if the mastermind behind it didn’t own the company
It continues to amaze me how poor branding decisions get made when you could have easily predicted this.
I'm reminded of how poorly named the Go programming language is. So many people refer to it as "golang" since "go" is too common of a word.
If I name something I want people to search for, I'll definitely go with something more unique.
- bombcar 3y agoThis is why the Apple renaming of various applications to “generic term.app” annoys me so much. iTunes I can search for. Music I can’t.
- rcme 3y agoAt least you can search Apple Music. What are you supposed to search for when looking for X in the App Store? X X?
- threeseed 3y agoThe surreal part is that X is pushing more towards TikTok style video content. Search for "x videos funny cats" and ask how on earth that is going to be sustainable for their brand.
- LordShredda 3y agoAlmost got me, God elon is a moron
- _hcuq 3y agoYeah. Should have called it XXX. 3 x's are better than one....
- marcosdumay 3y agoInterestingly, DDG finds a lot of real cats on youtube.
- taneq 3y agoA valid criticism and an illustration all wrapped up in one.
- pfranz 3y agoEspecially since I think they botched the whole splitting up of iTunes (which should have happened years earlier). I want to buy a digital movie from Apple. It does not occur to me to open the TV.app then click on Store and look for it there. What do you call the iPhone syncing and backup part on the Mac? I guess they were demoted to features in the Finder with nothing to refer to it. Then there's Apple TV (the app--just shown as TV in many places), Apple TV (the set top device), AppleTV+ (the subscription service)...with the Apple icon swapped out in some places adding to the confusion.
- voidfunc 3y agoTrying to explain the AppleTV vs AppleTV vs AppleTV+ thing to my 75 year old parents was an exercise in frustration and made me hate Apple even more.
- threeseed 3y agoIt's only "generic term.app" on your device. Full name is "Apple generic term". https://www.apple.com/services/ https://www.apple.com/services/
- einr 3y agoI sysadmin a bunch of Macs and every time I have to talk about Apple's mail client to users -- as opposed to the generic concept of mail -- it's a whole ordeal. "Do you use Mail? Uhh, Mail.app, you know, Apple Mail, the built-in one that comes with macOS"
- flemhans 3y agoI usually just say Apple Mail to clients
- joshstrange 3y agoSee also new Swift class names. You can search for NS* easily enough but the Swift classes are harder.
- Gustomaximus 3y agoIve been across a bunch of rebranding and it seems far more often a vanity project by a manager, than a performance focused decision. Also there is almost always a heavey focus on visual elements vs content and other strategy as for most people that's the fun stuff.
- sureglymop 3y agoUsually when rebrandings are actually successful they are more about hiding whatever came before. This is very hard to execute well though. One extremely successful example is Musically -> TikTok for the international version of Douyin. Musically had a very bad reputation and TikTok was able to start cleanly and operate without that scrutiny for years resulting in it becoming mainstream.
- androidbishop 3y agoKind of a funny coincidence that the english word for the ancient board game shares the same poor branding and searchability over the exact same word
- sshine 3y agoThe English word for the board game is almost literally a phonetic transcript [íꜜgò].
- seattle_spring 3y agoIt's like someone naming their dog "Sit."
- MilnerRoute 3y agoReminds me of a McSweeney's list with "Names of seven bands that it would be impossible to book." https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/seven-band-names-that-would-be-impossible-to-book https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/seven-band-names-that-wo...
- ianmcgowan 3y agoReminds me of my girlfriend's favorite band at Columbia in the 80's - "The Special Guests". They eventually had to change their name because people kept showing up expecting, I don't know, Billy Joel or Beastie Boys, and got mad. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rDcKIAXGRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rDcKIAXGRA Paul Cezanne (the father of cubism) for a pixelated blast of 80's pop
- alsetmusic 3y agoIt took a ton of effort to find and order a cd by a group called Various. No clue if they did that as a laugh or not, but I was relieved when I found them.
- deepfriedchokes 3y ago“The Guess Who”
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 3y agoThe opposite problem of the name the band settles on in the movie PCU. "Tonight, at The Pit: 'Everyone Gets Laid'."
- volkl48 3y agoOn that note, it's somewhat remarkable that The Band managed to find success under that moniker.
- sxp 3y ago> I'm reminded of how poorly named the Go programming language is. So many people refer to it as "golang" since "go" is too common of a word. The first search results for [go], [rust], and [ruby] all return links about the programming languages. And most people can figure it out from the context.
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y agoI doubt that your search results weren’t in some way personalised. Also, this problem is much more prevalent when you are searching for more than just the language name.
- omoikane 3y agoGo is not quite the same in that it didn't have an existing established brand to ruin. But it managed to roll with that name, after years of building on it. "X" might be an OK name 16 years from now, the problem is that it already has a pretty good name called "Twitter".
- HeavyStorm 3y agoHad
- wlesieutre 3y agoEspecially funny here, since officially Musk isn’t the CEO anymore and the actual CEO (Linda Yaccarino) has an advertising background and must have known this was a terrible idea.
- deepGem 3y agoIt's quite funny how Gwynne Shotwell is able to steer SpaceX despite Musk while this new Twitter CEO is borderline toothless. There is just no way she would have allowed this to play out, given that advertising and branding is her core competency. So am guessing she was overruled.
- nemothekid 3y agoShotwell was recruited by Musk in 2002 and became COO in 2008. I feel Shotwell is more comfortable telling Elon to fuck off and has more autonomy in her role because shes almost a cofounder.
- foobarian 3y agoCould be, or maybe Musk is just not focused on SpaceX but on Twitter?
- soligern 3y agoI’m pretty sure Musk was a much more stable person back then. The thing that completely made him hate the left and lose his mind was one of his kids becoming trans. It really is annoying there isn’t any true centrism and if you have to align with the left you have to buy into this trans ideology or your only other option is the logic defying insanity that is the right.
- jmopp 3y agoIt's almost as though being trans is not an ideology but something genuine that people are becoming more accepting of.
- 3y ago
- TheBlight 3y ago[flagged]
- tmpX7dMeXU 3y agoHave you? Are people not allowed to have opinions?
- TheBlight 3y agoI guess my point is I see people all day everyday Monday-morning-quarterbacking decisions made by immensely successful people done so with zero humility nor recognition of all the home-runs these people have hit. There is seemingly no reason for these critics to feel like they can uniquely handicap the decisions these people made yet they are never remotely reluctant to do so. It just gets obnoxious seeing a random HNer think they know more about branding than the founder of Tesla and SpaceX -- to the point of accusing this founder of missing which would otherwise be obvious to the HNer. Wait a few years then opine.
- cafeinux 3y agoTesla wasn't founded by Musk (he acquired it in 2004), and regarding how he likes to put X's everywhere, this rebranding feels like an ego trip more than a conscious marketing decision. Now to be honest, after having completely destroyed the Twitter brand, moving to a new name might seem like a good idea to make people forget about the "Titter" catastophe. But now instead of having to reconstruct Twitter's reputation, he has to create a whole new reputation for a whole new brand who just happens to already have disgruntled user from the get go...
- TheBlight 3y agoIs your argument that Musk isn't most directly responsible for the state of the Tesla brand? Were you familiar with the brand prior to Musk's acquisition?
- 3y ago
- est 3y ago> So many people refer to it as "golang" since "go" is too common of a word. Reminds me of how many names does Postgres have (at least five: pg, psql, pgsql, postgres, postgresql). LMAO the SEO is such chaos.
- SoftTalker 3y agoWas there ever a "gresql" that "postgresql" was the successor to?
- mazelife 3y agoThis, I believe: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_(database) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingres_(database)
- defrost 3y agoYep - beat me to that .. and I wanted to dive in as I once used Ingres before Postgres became a thing! I came to Postgres just before the GIS range filters were added and chipped in on the backend as a project (very old now) needed a DB with GIS capabilities.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- arcanemachiner 3y agoI settled on "Postgres" since it's the only one that does not have ambiguous pronunciation. Also the Postgres wiki explicitly mentions it as one of the official names (on mobile so too lazy to link).
- jasfi 3y agoSearch engines can handle synonyms like that quite easily. You wouldn't confuse any of those with something else easily. But Go is easily confused without additional terms to disambiguate.
- 3y ago
- iancmceachern 3y agoIt's like how you can't buy an oscilloscope from HP, the company that defined the test equipment market. Or how you can't buy an IBM pc anymore. Or how Boston chicken changed to Boston market and back and back
- vkou 3y ago> It's like how you can't buy an oscilloscope from HP, the company that defined the test equipment market. Or how you can't buy an IBM pc anymore Or how you can't even buy an express horse-and-buggy package delivery from Wells Fargo. Moving out of markets (because you lost your competitive edge, because your star players have died/retired/became goat farmers, because the margins have gone to zero, because some other market is much more profitable) is completely different from actively and preventably screwing up a market you're in.
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoExcept unlike horse and buggy delivery, there's still demand for test equipment. In this case, HP spun off their test equipment arm as Agilent, which spun it off again under the name KeySight. They still make scopes.
- vkou 3y agoThere's still demand for express deliveries, but as it turns out, there's a lot more money in banking. (And in HP's case, it's a branding decision that, frankly, is reasonable for them to go either way with.)
- iancmceachern 3y agoWell Fargo's previous business wasn't really express deliveries. It was secure deliveries: "The company had built a reputation for taking safety seriously, and its stagecoaches carried gold, silver, and other valuables from one location to the next. To safeguard such shipments, Wells Fargo shipped gold and other treasure in sturdy wooden boxes carried in the front boot of a stagecoach or secured inside the stagecoach in an iron safe." https://www.wellsfargohistory.com/outwitting-outlaws/ https://www.wellsfargohistory.com/outwitting-outlaws/ So, basically banking. Securing, and moving money as a service.
- jnsaff2 3y ago> how poorly named Go is Ahem how about Chef config management with most its tools named after poor cooking analogies. Cookbook, recipe, kitchen, knife, etc etc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- redareda9 3y agoLooking at you Make (ex Integromat). Their SEO got destroyed after the rebranding
- dimitar 3y agoCompare with Clojure which can only be the programming language
- suction 3y ago[dead]