7 ms·
The Agonies of Picking a Product Name (2011)
- drchiu 11y agoAgree on the spirit of the post. The name really doesn't matter as much. But there are considerations to think about nonetheless. For example, is the name's domain name available? Can the domain name be misrepresented? eg. expertsexchange.com (Experts Exchange vs Expert Sex Change) How about social media names (eg. twitter.com/<name you want>)? I think nowadays, considerations on names really should centre on availability of the desired name across domain names, social media pages, and avoiding existing trademarks. Incidentally I blogged about this recently: http://simononstartups.com/blog/2015/05/31/9-lessons-for-finding-a-good-startup-domain-name/ http://simononstartups.com/blog/2015/05/31/9-lessons-for-fin... PS. People criticizing Twitter pointed out at the beginning how "twit" or "tw*t" were bad names to associate with the product too.
- iamlolz 11y agoI'm in two minds whether or not to consider if the domain is available when choosing a name. On the one hand I don't think it should be a factor, on the other hand I know I'll be checking anyway.
- jamesrom 11y agoWhy don't you think it should be a factor? I think it's pretty much the only factor. Domain name. Not too weird. Less than 10 characters. Done.
- iamlolz 11y agoBecause a business shouldn't constrained to fit an available domain. Dropbox originally registered getdropbox.com because dropbox.com wasn't available. If they'd worried about an available domain name they wouldn't have ended up with something nearly as fitting.
- k__ 11y agoAlso there are a bunch of top-level domains available and ever growing. So availability shouldn't be a big issue. People should be more concerned about not choosing common words. Mozilla and Google can pull off Rust and Go, but you probably can't.
- DonHopkins 11y agoI worked on porting a product named "Software Express VideoTex" to the Apple ][, and I came up with a plausibly deniable way to write the name in fixed width text or scrabble pieces in an "S" shaped logo, scoring a double subliminal "sex" bonus: Software E x p r e s s VideoTex https://books.google.nl/books?id=zvLd5Aw2T3YC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=%22Software+Express+VideoTex%22&source=bl&ots=9XNQFLK_f2&sig=LXP2xKIyGPY_I-eB70LViD4-_Sc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PYlxVcOGAci1UfjQgvAB&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22Software%20Express%20VideoTex%22&f=false https://books.google.nl/books?id=zvLd5Aw2T3YC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA...
- TerryADavis 11y agoMicrosoft and the CIA went nuclear with Secure Boot. TempleOS has no networking -- you use it while dual booting with Windows and Linux. I did the only thing I could. I put all my money on God and went with TempleOS. It was God's plan all along. I made His holy Temple. They will suck my dick.
- Chevalier 11y ago>We ended up with a name very similar to the one we started with, one that all of us like just fine, and one which is just going to be what people call our new, supremely free, project management app. I think everyone would have gotten used to Hippolist too, but it doesn’t matter, because it’s called Trello now. >In the end we should have just had Michael do the whole name picking in thirty minutes and been done with it. I mean... successful names DO imply what the product is. "Google" is similar to the English language term for staring in wonder. "Facebook" is taken from the existing name for books of college students. "MyFitnessPal," clunky as the name and product are, is a pretty informative name. If you rattled off a list of these names to a grandmother, chances are that she could divine the purpose of each website. I'm a huge fan of Trello, and I think the name works well the same way that "Xerox" worked well -- because most people really don't have another word for kanban systems or photocopies, and the product name suddenly defines the category. But unless you're churning out revolutionary new products rather than refining existing ideas, I think it makes sense for your name to in some way characterize your product.
- tjradcliffe 11y agoTrello is a meaningless name. It evokes nothing. It sounds like a portmanteau of "trellis" and "mellow". Even though I've read about the product, or service, or whatever it is, I have no idea what it does because the name has all the sticking power of wet teflon (another meaningless name that was successfully marketed, demonstrating how little names matter).
- mercer 11y agoIt's not entirely meaningless, though. It brings to mind 'friendly' and 'fuzzy', and 'dynamic' in a way that 'Xerox' does not. The way a word sounds definitely carries some level of 'meaning'. Whether this was intentional, or whether it plays a big role in Trello's success is a different story.
- philippnagel 11y agoGoogle was derived from the word Googol, not the word goggling. Pure coincidence. [0]: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html http://graphics.stanford.edu/~dk/google_name_origin.html
- wtracy 11y agoThere's a very similar tale behind the name Toy Story.
- nathan_f77 11y agoNames are really hard. We spent a while trying to come up with a name for our skateboarding app, and settled on Hardware (abbreviated as HDWR). "Hardware" is what skaters call the nuts and bolts that attach the trucks to the deck. I'm still not totally sold on it, but we haven't been able to come up with anything better.
- levlandau 11y agoAgree that the bias is to overestimate the power of a name but disagree with the notions that a) the name doesn't matter that much and b) the wasteful process of going through a ton of names to arrive at something close to what they started with was not actually necessary for coming up with and feeling satisfied with that name in the first place. I'm pretty sure Hippolist wouldn't have worked as well as Trello in a quantifiably material way.
- sdrothrock 11y agoI wonder if this submission was influenced by the post about CockroachDB, which was on the front page and seems to have vanished.
- amirmc 11y agoIt's still there (currently at number 7). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9660339
- sdrothrock 11y agoWhoops, my bad. What a terrible title; I completely missed it.
- amirmc 11y agoTitle comes from their blog post, which does make sense in that context (it's their first post). Doesn't work out of context though.
- M8 11y agoVanished: "Cockroaches are mainly nocturnal[10] and will run away when exposed to light." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockroach
- amirmc 11y ago> "In the end we should have just had Michael do the whole name picking in thirty minutes and been done with it." I think this overlooks the value of having everyone feel that they were involved/heard. Maybe going through this process at least once is a kind of rite of passage. Next time around, no-one would be as wedded to their ideas and the process would be quicker.
- brador 11y agoA bad name can kill a good product and hinder a great product. Example: Diaspora, Deus Ex.
- DonHopkins 11y agoAnd then there was Java. Remember that first gold rush of derivative Java related product names?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- M8 11y agoIt's even worse for non-native speakers.