4 ms·

Companies are allowed to change their names. If we didn’t roll with it then FANG would be something like TCKB (The Facebook, Cadabra, Kibble, BackRub).

DrBazza 3y ago
Sometimes it just doesn't work. My favourite was Price Waterhouse changing their name to everyone's favourite day of the week, Monday. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2163472.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2163472.stm
- docdeek 3y ago
  I didn’t know about that one - and that article/obit is a great find, thanks for sharing. :) Funny thing is that Monday is now a productivity/team tool that I know a few people really like. Maybe they got a deal from PwC on the URL?
  - DrBazza 3y ago
    It was the peak of dotcom boom silliness. One of my friends worked there and said the company were beside themselves with glee that they’d bagged a six letter word dotcom domain name and had to use it.
gus_massa 3y ago
Facebook renamed itself as Meta. Google renamed itself as Alphabet. So it should be MANA.
- benwad 3y ago
  MAMAA is a more recent acronym - Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet. Updated FB/Google's names, dropped Netflix (because it's really more of a media company), and added MS.
- crote 3y ago
  Did they really, though? Their rebranding didn't really effect anything beyond the holding company. Facebook is still called Facebook, and the Google Pixel is still made by Google. I bet the general public has pretty much zero familiarity with the Meta / Alphabet brands. In essence it was nothing more than an attempt to misdirect public attention away from their well-known brands. See, it's Alphabet doing a bad thing - they are totally different from Google!
- theandrewbailey 3y ago
  F*** the MMAAAN: Meta Microsoft Alphabet Apple Amazon Netflix
rsynnott 3y ago
While they are, everyone else is allowed to ignore them doing this, particularly when it's silly. For instance, there was a period of about 18 months in the early noughties when the Royal Mail (the UK post office) changed its name to Consignia. Everyone sensibly ignored this, and they quietly changed it back. The first few years of this century were _weird_.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  I heard one of the people responsible for the Consignia branding change talking about how the drama was entirely a media fiction, and found him convincing. The basic gist was "The Post Office" and "Royal Mail" brand were not going anywhere. "Consignia" was a brand intended for Europe (and indeed worldwide) cargo, logistics and transport parts of the business where those existing names were ill-suited (e.g. other countries have royals too). But you get enough misleading media stories and you're forced to roll back things you were never intending to do in the first place. A victory for common sense, it was not. edit: apparently the parent company is now called "International Distributions Services plc" which is super generic. Contemporary news article covering this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2002480.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2002480.stm
deleted 3y ago
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DrBazza 3y ago

Sometimes it just doesn't work. My favourite was Price Waterhouse changing their name to everyone's favourite day of the week, Monday. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2163472.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2163472.stm

docdeek 3y ago
I didn’t know about that one - and that article/obit is a great find, thanks for sharing. :) Funny thing is that Monday is now a productivity/team tool that I know a few people really like. Maybe they got a deal from PwC on the URL?
- DrBazza 3y ago
  It was the peak of dotcom boom silliness. One of my friends worked there and said the company were beside themselves with glee that they’d bagged a six letter word dotcom domain name and had to use it.

gus_massa 3y ago

Facebook renamed itself as Meta. Google renamed itself as Alphabet. So it should be MANA.

benwad 3y ago
MAMAA is a more recent acronym - Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet. Updated FB/Google's names, dropped Netflix (because it's really more of a media company), and added MS.
crote 3y ago
Did they really, though? Their rebranding didn't really effect anything beyond the holding company. Facebook is still called Facebook, and the Google Pixel is still made by Google. I bet the general public has pretty much zero familiarity with the Meta / Alphabet brands. In essence it was nothing more than an attempt to misdirect public attention away from their well-known brands. See, it's Alphabet doing a bad thing - they are totally different from Google!
theandrewbailey 3y ago
F*** the MMAAAN: Meta Microsoft Alphabet Apple Amazon Netflix

rsynnott 3y ago

While they are, everyone else is allowed to ignore them doing this, particularly when it's silly. For instance, there was a period of about 18 months in the early noughties when the Royal Mail (the UK post office) changed its name to Consignia. Everyone sensibly ignored this, and they quietly changed it back. The first few years of this century were _weird_.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
I heard one of the people responsible for the Consignia branding change talking about how the drama was entirely a media fiction, and found him convincing. The basic gist was "The Post Office" and "Royal Mail" brand were not going anywhere. "Consignia" was a brand intended for Europe (and indeed worldwide) cargo, logistics and transport parts of the business where those existing names were ill-suited (e.g. other countries have royals too). But you get enough misleading media stories and you're forced to roll back things you were never intending to do in the first place. A victory for common sense, it was not. edit: apparently the parent company is now called "International Distributions Services plc" which is super generic. Contemporary news article covering this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2002480.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2002480.stm

deleted 3y ago

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