
Network Solutions renames their services for added obscurity - jgrahamc
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/08/network-solutions-renames-their.html
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adamt
Unfortunately this is becoming far too common. The marketing team thinks "hey
we need to have a 'proper' name for this product" and they end up alienating
and confusing their user-base. 99% of customers know they they want to
register a domain and not buy a nsWebAddress.

In my experience this happens when a company starts hiring marketing and sales
people that are so far removed from the typical buyers and they eventually
have no language in common. It's also a good indicator of a business that is
doomed in the not too distant future.

~~~
extension
But NS's target market is the other 1% who are too unsavvy to know what a
domain is, or that Netsol are the most legendary shitbags on the internet.
They don't want those customers googling the name of the product and finding
out that it can be bought elsewhere. Marketing knows what they're doing.

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jawngee
Epic MBA WTF.

~~~
maukdaddy
As an MBA-in-training I resent that! I would _NEVER_ rename services to
something that asinine. Although I'm not in marketing... ;)

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sammcd
The NS suffix is even more confusing for Cocoa programmers.

[[nsWebAddress alloc] initWithDomain:@"example.com"]

~~~
pavlov
Worse, the lowercase "ns" prefix is used by Mozilla. E.g.
<https://developer.mozilla.org/en/nsString>

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jrnkntl
Who uses this overpriced Network Solutions nowadays? I needed to work with it
for a client, registering overpriced domain names through them is a huge pain
in the ass as they try to sell you all this other nonsense. It's really one
long road with obstacles to get it only registered.

~~~
teej
People who make registrar decisions based on advertisements, which is a fair
amount of non-tech people.

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ErrantX
how precisely can they trademark "Design/Develop" ?

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jgrahamc
They sent me a message about one of my domains which contained the following
text "nsWebAddress .COM". I couldn't actually parse that and figured their
email system must have been misconfigured.

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there
now your tech support calls can be as fun as ordering coffee at starbucks.

"hi, i'm calling on behalf of customer xyz. i need to have their domain
xyz.com unlocked."

"you mean their nswebaddress, sir."

"no, i mean their domain name. xyz.com."

"a domain is an nswebaddress, sir."

"then why don't you just call it a domain name? so, can you unlock it?"

"i can unlock their nswebaddress, sure."

~~~
humbledrone
The Starbucks naming conventions drive me crazy because of the fact that they
all mean, essentially, "big." So it's impossible to remember which "big" you
want for a medium-sized coffee!

~~~
gojomo
They always humor me when I order 'small'/'medium'/'large'.

But also, did you know there's a secret even-smaller 'short' size? See:

<http://www.slate.com/id/2133754/>

I don't think there's an "animal style" cappucino, though.

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tome
Notice how all the new terms are trademarked. That must have played a big role
in the decision.

~~~
twopoint718
That's exactly it. You can't trademark "Sci-Fi" and you can't trademark
"Domain", but these things, you can.

[http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/07/sci-fi-channel-
reboot...](http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/07/sci-fi-channel-reboots-as-
syfy-with-eye-on-expanding-empire/)

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blhack
what are they going to call their whois service?

nslookup?

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bcl
FYI they also run namesecure.com, but obscure it pretty well. The interface
sucks and the service sucks even more. But it is cheaper than their normal
Network Solutions portal.

I switched to namecheap.com instead.

