

Smash Lab Sucks: An Open Letter to the Discovery Channel - karjaluoto
http://www.smashlabsucks.com/

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noonespecial
Always trademark something you .com. Always. Its like $250. If you're going to
call your company that. Trademark it.

 _These guys seemed big enough to perform due diligence and come up with
something original._

They probably did a tess search here and found the name unused. Due Diligence.

[http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=7ro35j....](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=7ro35j.1.1)

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karjaluoto
Agreed--we should have done that. At the time we purchased the Canadian
trademark, which, once done totaled up to around $2,000. The agent at the time
told us that the process for us to get an American one would cost about the
same. We decided that we couldn't afford it then.

My feeling is that we could likely go after them as the program is aired in
Canada as well. That being said, their lawyers are probably more numerous and
well paid than ours. As such, I suspect we'd spend plenty and gain little.

So instead, we're being a buzzing little fly, spinning about their heads.
(Likely not much more than an annoyance, but having some fun nevertheless.)

And isn't fun supposed to be part of it? ;-)

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karjaluoto
Hi all,

Just thought I'd take a moment to explain why I posted this here.

When we started our firm in 2000, there were no other groups in the world
named "smashLAB". A few years later a band called their rehearsal hall
“smashlabs” and someone else did something with it, but we weren’t
particularly concerned.

When the Discovery Channel poached it though, we were a little choked. These
guys seemed big enough to perform due diligence and come up with something
original. That being said, we're small--what were we to do?

Month after month we watched as more people commented about what a horrible
show the Discovery Channel had churned out. As a result, a Google search for
smashLAB didn't just turn up results on the television program; it also
brought with it numerous blogs and posts about how badly "Smash Lab sucks".

This morning we pondered changing our name; but instead, decided to have some
fun. Visit the site and see what we did to amuse ourselves. :-)

Eric

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sam_in_nyc
Nice way to grab SEO focus off of the dilemma and play it to your... well...
um... not play it to your disadvantage.

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karjaluoto
That's what we were thinking. Sort of a: "The damage is already done--why not
have some fun with it?"

I'm not sure about exact numbers yet (Analytics reporting typically isn't that
accurate until the next day), but it's been visited a great deal today.

Sort of nice to have some positive spin out of this. :-)

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sam_in_nyc
Plus, sometimes it's just good to vent!

I think I saw you on an elevator pitch? Was it MakeFive? How much traffic do
you get from that?

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karjaluoto
We did receive some traffic from it, but not quite as much as we were led to
believe we might see as a result of TechCrunch featuring us. (That being said,
it's certainly nice of them to have covered us!)

Truth is,the biggest referrer that we see continues to be StumbleUpon. Those
guys send us lots of traffic. We love them and want to bear their children;
but, given the physical improbability of that, we'd probably just buy them
lots of beer.

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sam_in_nyc
Very interesting... I always thought that Techcrunch would bring a ton of
traffic, but I guess it's moreso their blog than their elevator pitch page. It
was a nice pitch, nonetheless.

StumbleUpon, eh? Is this just organic traffic or have you done something to
instigate it? And keep an open mind about having children with a website...
some day it'll be possible.

~~~
karjaluoto
Actually, TechCrunch did feature it on their main page as well. It did bring
traffic, but not so much that our servers were choking, as we had thought
might happen.

Thanks for the kind words about the pitch--it's hard trying to nail that kind
of thing down. :-)

We have stumbled a couple of our pages on our own and that has done a little,
but we got a little carried away, and that seemed to reduce the significance
of our stumbles for it. Now it's mostly users stumbling that has brought
traffic. The weird part is that it's often just one page that brings a lot of
people in.

The downside with StumbleUpon is that it brings traffic, but little of it
builds the userbase. It's a spike and that's generally it. Nevertheless, it
does get the brand out there, which is helpful.

And as for website children… we’ll just wait and see what comes of that. ;-)

