

Choose Your Name With Care - BrandonWatson
http://www.thefailingpoint.com/2009/07/gettingstarted/choose-your-name-without-care/

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MicahWedemeyer
I agree with the "must have .com" mentality, unless you're targeting a tech-
savvy market specifically, then you can get away with the domain hacking (.us,
.ly, .me, etc.)

However, let's be honest: your name is not going to make or break you. Don't
let choosing a name hold up real progress. If you're sitting there trying to
decide what to name your svn/git repo, just call it "myapp" and move on.

~~~
grellas
"Fatbrain.com," I thought, hurt Computer Literacy Books when it decided to
broaden its brand and go public.

The name was professionally chosen and got favorable write-ups at the time
(2000 era). Though memorable, it somehow had a wrong feel for the nature of
the company's business (selling tech-related books in Silicon Valley).

~~~
jamesbritt
{*}

Still got the cap!

Fatbrain sounds more fun.

------
staunch
I agree overall. I do think there are some exceptions though. xpertsite.com is
horrid, but I _might_ suffer the problems if I could get XPert.com or xprt.com
even. Maybe. They're so short that spelling or typing them is very easy.

Same with AskMe.com. It might be annoying, but that's a good domain, and a
good name. I think IMSafer just sucks. IMSafe.com is way better.

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jasonkester
The single most important thing in a product name these days is that it needs
to be immediately spellable. Surprisingly, this is this single most common
mistake that startups make when choosing a product name.

"Hey, check out my site biivo.com!"

"Ok, type-type-type... Uh, it's a domain squatter's parking page."

"No, it's spelled with two i's and only one v."

"Ohhhh. let me try again..."

The day I registered Twiddla.com, I also registered Twidla.com and a few other
misspellings. People in the UK sometimes try going to Twiddler.com and there's
not much we can do about it. Fortunately, we're the #3 Google result for
"Twiddle", and we get about 5% of our search traffic from that keyword.

It's hard to imagine how much traffic these startups with missing letters and
intentional misspellings are missing out on.

~~~
jamesbritt
OTOH, I though "Wii" was the dopiest name imaginable, yet it seems to not have
mattered.

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eserorg
Do not overlook the importance of trademarks:

Be sure that you can obtain a trademark for your name from the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office (uspto.gov).

Be aware of the "gotchas" in what are considered acceptable trademarks.

For instance, under U.S. law, a "geographically (mis)-descriptive" trade name
is often very difficult to trademark.

Furthermore, trademarks are often not addressed by OSI-approved open-source
licenses (The GPL, for example). Therefore, obtaining a trademark for your
open-source project can be a very effective way of de-comoditizing your open
source project, achieving containment of forks, and building a revenue-
generating business around your code base. Example: Red Hat vs Centos.

Own your namespace.

~~~
BrandonWatson
This is an excellent point. Trademarks are very important. We had to buy "IM
Safe" as a trademark from a public company which had acquired the trademark in
one of their acquisitions. They didn't even know they had it.

Trademarks are a tricky beast, and one that can get you a cease and desist
letter from a lawyer, and I hate getting mail from lawyers.

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andyking
During the late-90s bubble, a group of British radio stations chose the name
koko.com for their internet presence.

Think about it - could you have found a _worse_ name for something that's
going to be read out on the radio repeatedly through the day? "Check out
koko.com, that's kay-oh-kay-oh-dot-com."

Koko.com is long gone, but the practice remains. At present, I'm on a radio
station with a hyphen in its domain name. I sound like I'm going dotty when I
read out the email address. Infuriating. Don't do it!

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mcav
Question: What do you think about E-mail addresses not ending in .com?

I currently use a g-mail address (firstlast@gmail.com), but also have for
potential use:

    
    
        first@firstlast.com
        first@last.me
    

I don't like having a GMail address because someday I might want to switch
away from GMail. I'd rather have an address on a domain I control.

~~~
pkulak
I have firstname@lastname.us and use Gmail. It's dead easy to set up, and
free.

~~~
alexitosrv
I apologize beforehand my ignorance, but how did you that?

~~~
pkulak
<http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html>

Free for personal use.

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dmor
what do you all think of the "empty vessel" concept for naming things - names
that mean nothing immediately related to the product, but completely unused
and un-liked a concept?

Fandango Loopt Amazon Exxon Texaco Google (most people had no clue what a
Googol was) Pepsi Nike Coke Wachovia Verizon Xerox Sunoco Sysco Alcoa Aetna
Tesoro Exelon Kroger Nucor Pfizer

the list goes on and on

By the way, I know there are many very clever "spins" on these names to help
them relate to their products, but upon first look this isn't evident.

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Confusion
I wonder whether perfect names exist anymore. All the short, simple,
meaningful names must be gone by now. Whatever you choose, you'll end up with
something that's either long, irregular, hard to remember, overloaded or
otherwise impaired. Which leads me to question: is the company name really
_that_ important? Or is myscream.com (squatted) a fine name for an emo
icecream vendor?

