

The agonies of picking a product name and how we chose Trello - buzzcut
http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-agonies-of-picking-a-product-name/

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zach
Consumers can get over a weird name (Wii?!) but what hurts is when they can
never remember it.

It's easier to remember names that are concrete (even though monkeys have
nothing to do with surveys) or have a memorable connection to the product's
usage, like Reddit.

When someone hears the name, understands the product's use or sees the site,
try to give them a thread that they can pull on later to remember the name.
That's all.

I feel bad about calling out Ninite as a counterexample but several HNers say
they can never remember their name. If your name isn't relevant, at least let
it be memorable.

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r00fus
Though I liked the blog post, I think that the conclusion is a bit facile. The
analogy that comes to mind is "going to the store to buy a new PC and coming
home with a new keyboard instead for your existing one".

Sometimes you don't appreciate what you have (with minor modifications) until
you take the journey.

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metachris
It sounds like a good amount of time was wasted because the domains were
already taken, which was only discovered after discussing and voting on them.
It might have been better to forfeit all names without domain in first place.
It's still possible to find good, free names. <http://impossibility.org> is a
pretty good domain name generator, for instance.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
<http://domai.nr/> is pretty neat as well

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antrix
This reminds me of something that happened here in Singapore not too long ago.
The government had big plans of reviving the downtown area with lots of new
developments, including the new casinos. As part of this makeover, they
thought the then name of the area - Marina Bay - needed to be retired too.

So they hired a consulting firm and paid them about half a million dollars
(IIRC) to come up with a new name.

In the end, the name they picked was.. Marina Bay. Yes, half a million to just
continue with the old name! The spin was that the name was good and already
part of the national culture/image. Which, to the layman, was obvious from the
start :-)

~~~
smh
Actually, I'm impressed. That's a much better (and braver) decision than
forcing through a new name just to save face.

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xianshou
Trelolololo, lololo, lololo, lololololooooooo...

~~~
jedc
I'm glad I wasn't the only person who was thinking this.

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CurrentB
Just my opinion, and you're right that it pretty much doesn't matter, but I
don't like "Trello" because we already have "trulia" and "twilio". They just
are too similar to me.

~~~
mshafrir
Also "Tropo"

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zerostar07
That's all good if you are an notable evangelist like Spolsky, but i think
it's best to use something at least vaguely descriptive. Sure, people can
remember the 7 most popular sites on the net, but for the rest it's best to
choose something that can come up easily when you struggle to remember the
freaking name of that service. For example, Picplz=obvious, groupon=sort of
obvious, Quora=might come up when thinking "questions". I prefer to pick the
site subject and add a funny/fuzzy or non-english suffix for my projects, e.g.
projectilo.com, noteplz.com, mapifier.com etc.

~~~
jethroalias97
Although a less descriptive name allows you to adapt your service more easily.
If amazon started as onlinebooks.com it would have made the migration to
online everything + AWS + kindle + everything else more difficult.

~~~
zerostar07
on the other hand if evernote had a captcha-looking name i 'd never have
stumbled upon it.

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ww520
Naming can be an agonizing process, especially the need for domain name and
SEO consideration.

OT. Are number in product names or domain names bad in general? E.g.
foobar101.

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ubi
Another interesting part of the project name / url debate:

Is having [product].com that important?

In their book and blog 37Signals has generally played down the importance of
urls. Pointing to the use of basecamphq.com for their project management
offering.

I must say I am on the fence. Clearly appending something to your product's
name opens more options for un-squatted domains but at what cost to the end
user?

~~~
buzzcut
I'd love to hear what people think about this. I _think_ a .com name is
important, but I can't back that up with any real evidence. And basecamp is a
great example of it not mattering.

We considered trelloapp.com (and use trelloapp on Twitter), and my guess is
that it all would have turned out fine either way. But I still have a possibly
irrational attachment to the [name].com

~~~
raminf
Completely agree with the "giant time-slurping vortex" part :-)

In the mobile world the {product}app.com convention is pretty prevalent and
has opened up some choices. You could always start a new convention for web-
based products.

I personally don't think a single product needs to have its own unique domain.
Most browsers nowadays have the combo URL/search field feature (or the search
field is right next to the URL). Someone typing in the product name will
likely find it one way or another.

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rdl
Is it trello like hello, or trello like llello (yeyo)?

I dislike names which 1) can't be said and transcribed unambiguously over a
4kbps bad cellphone call by a non-native speaker to a non-native speaker and
2) don't have an unambiguous pronunciation...people might not mention your
product if they're afraid of sounding stupid mispronouncing "ver-say-che",
etc.

~~~
polshaw
I'm going to assume trello, like trellis!

I agree with your points but think trello is fairly unambiguous, considering
it was an available (? or cheap) 6 letter .com domain.

~~~
BrandonM
It's unambiguous if your native language is not a romance language.

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pama
Trello means crazy in greek.

~~~
tghw
I think you mean "τρελός" :)

From the look of it, there's only one L.

~~~
kgtm
Actually, it used to be spelled with a double "λ" but went out of fashion in
favor of the simpler form.

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mootothemax
One aspect I'm interested in is the SEO angle. For instance, if I make cow
food and call myself Cow Food Online, register a domain of cowfoodonline.com,
would I stand to benefit from having lots of links with "Cow Food Online"
pointing at my domain, since that'd be the name of my service?

~~~
terrellm
If you make "cow food", you probably want CattleFeed.com instead of
CowFood.com or CowFoodOnline.com. A cow is a female bovine while cattle is one
or more bovines of any gender. Not being picky... I'm a HN'er who makes his
living writing software and running e-commerce stores for the cattle industry
:D

As patio mentioned, there is the exact match bonus where your domain
(com/net/org) matches the query exactly. Also, an exact match domain tends to
lead to anchor text (inbound links) with the keyword. So the one-two punch of
an EMD (exact match domain + keyword-rich anchor text) is extremely helpful.

One word of caution with EMDs... I bought an EMD CattleTags.com for an
e-commerce store and have had to work on my branding to encourage people to
link to me as "Cattle Tags Online" or "Cattle Tags Store" rather than
"CattleTags.com" which isn't as desirable.

~~~
rmc
_If you make "cow food", you probably want CattleFeed.com instead of
CowFood.com or CowFoodOnline.com. A cow is a female bovine while cattle is one
or more bovines of any gender._

In short part of SEO is knowing what your customers are searching for, and
targeting that.

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Gring
The post also mentioned "Idealist". Would have been a much greater name, lots
of clever wordplays and explanations what it really is: Idea List Ideal Deal.
I wonder why they decided against it.

~~~
buzzcut
I liked that name the best. However someone get there way before us:
<http://www.idealist.org/>

~~~
dangrossman
> It looks like your browser might be out of date. Your experience on Idealist
> could be better if you update to the newest version.

I'm using Chrome 13. Amusing.

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puredemo
This seems like a process they would have figured out way before now.

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joshu
We went through similar agony to come up with jig.com.

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T_S_
Makes me think of Trello shots. Made with Pee Cola.

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pitdesi
One thing we learned is picking a good name is something you should do from
the start. We spent considerable time and energy replacing our earlier
terrible name (TransFS) with one we like (FeeFighters). The process was pretty
similar to Fog Creek's... we went through a huge exercise, met with branding
firms, etc. At the end of the day it was an 12th hour "we need something"
decision and now we love it. Who knows, we might have loved bidsquid and
costhammer just as much...

More on that in this Mixergy interview: <http://mixergy.com/sean-harper-
feefighters-intervie/>

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CPlatypus
Yes, naming is a huge time-suck. Not only do you have to worry about the
domain and the github project name, but you have to worry about trademarks as
well. Even if you hate trademarks and have no intention of registering
yourself, some other Johnny-come-lately could register a name you've worked
hard to give meaning to and then deny you its use. Prior use is an even less
effective defense with trademarks than with patents, and international
trademark issues are too nightmarish to talk about.

Take it from someone who has actually had to change a project name after two
years. You want a name that's pronouncable, barely memorable, but nothing to
do with any real words that others might contend for. There's a reason for all
those crappy nonsense-word names. They put an end to the pain so that
developers can go back to developing actual functionality.

