

How Bvckup got its name - kmfrk
http://bvckup.tumblr.com/post/3283335299/how-bvckup-got-its-name

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jorkos
This post seems to miss three important considerations: trademarks, domains &
"spellability". With respect to trademarks, it's worth taking a few minutes on
uspto.gov to understand the trademark landscape of your potential name.
Secondly, with respect to domains, it's worth assessing how much your desired
name will cost you. It is very rare to find a half-way decent name that has
not been registered, but many are either not being used or in the hands of
squatters. For a few thousand you can get a decent name. When your desired
name is in the hands of squatters, and you don't have the cash, I suggest
using something like "getDESIREDNAME" or "DESIREDNAMEapp".....if the service
succeeds you will have the cash to purchase the domain. Again, you want to
ensure going in that your desired name is not already being used in the same
manner that you intend to use it. On the final point, if someone can't spell
your name after hearing it, it's a fail. Flickr is not the exception that
disproves this rule.

Looking at Bvckup then w/ these considerations in mind, yes the trademark is
available and so was the domain, but on the third count it fails. My 2 cents.

~~~
latitude
First two points - fully agreed. I should've mentioned the domain name
availability, it is indeed the first coarse filter for rejecting name
candidates.

> if someone can't spell your name after hearing it, it's a fail.

Practically speaking - why is it a fail? Who are the prospective users that I
am going to loose over this?

~~~
jacques_chester
Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio.

Or rather, every user who doesn't because the producer can't work out how to
pronounce it, so it never goes on the teleprompter.

~~~
latitude
> Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio

That's not "practically speaking". If I ever to get a TV coverage, that'd be
of TWiT or similar, and I'm sure Leo can manage to pronounce it and follow-up
with the URL on the screen.

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pgbovine
at the risk of sounding ignorant, how the heck are people supposed to
pronounce your product name? in fact, how do you even talk about your product
verbally with others?

~~~
latitude
_Bee-vee-cup_ , but here's the thing - in two years of it being in beta this
has never come up as a real issue. I guess this _can_ impede a word of
(physical) mouth to a degree, but the assumption here is that few people are
going to need to actually pronouce the name.

Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious
phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as
its predominant usage is online.

~~~
kooshball
> Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious
> phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long
> as its predominant usage is online.

I'm not sure how your examples there help you at all. Each of them have clear
pronunciation: dribble, forest, XKCD each letter spelled out.

bee-vee-cup is not intuitive at all. If you show the logo to me I would have
guessed "Backup" with an inverted capital A.

~~~
latitude
Examples don't mean to help, they were meant to illustrate the point that
followed. The ease of pronunciation and the ability to spell the name from its
audible form are not all that important in the online context. This _is_ a
conjecture, not a fact, but based on what I've seen so far it appears to be a
valid one.

Moreover that stumble that your brain does when seeing it for the first time,
it makes the name memorable. Compare to something like "Super Backup" - fine,
easy flowing name, all clear. A week passes, and what do you remember? Was it
a "super" or an "ultra backup"? Now imagine it was called "Duper Backup" - the
same thing as with Bvckup, this quirk makes it more memorable and in the end
that's what counts.

I have to put a disclaimer here though :) I have rather unconventional views
of what makes or breaks the logos and names. I got flamed more than once for
these views on Logopond and Typophile, but I still firmly believe that a small
quirk in the name goes a long way. See, for example,
<http://dribbble.com/shots/92904-Puzzle>

~~~
zepolen
The name is alright, although personally I pronounce it _bvvvkup_ in my head
rather than bee-vee-ckup, but the point is that it's memorable. Explaining it
over the phone to someone might be harder.

The logo is a miss though imho, I honestly thought it was an upside A as well.
You could probably rectify it without losing the original concept though, for
example: <http://i.imgur.com/u0z2X.jpg>

~~~
latitude
_That_ is the exact change I was thinking of making. Thanks for the nudge.

------
latitude
800 uniques so far, about 50 downloads. I'll post updated counts in a bit for
everyone's amusement.

~~~
latitude
1475 uniques from HN in 8 hours, about 80 downloads. Receeding now.

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latitude
I was going to submit this myself, but you beat me to it.

In any case, while mostly in a reading mode, I _am_ on HN. If anyone has any
questions or comments, shoot, be happy to talk about my stuff :)

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eps
This method of creating the name is widely used by professional logo/identity
designers. David Airey has a good illustration -
<http://www.davidairey.com/berthier-logo-design-process>

The main problem with it that it is still unpredictable. It may lead to a good
name or it may not.

~~~
latitude
Certainly, it's a well-known method. My main goal was to illustrate the actual
flow from a set of words through associations to the name.

As for its unpredictability - at least it provides certain framework that
generally speeds up the convergence, as opposed to just sitting there and
brute-forcing the vocabulary:)

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trustfundbaby
I wondering how long the process took.

And kudos on your site design ... it made me go look at the actual site ...
and download the software and now I'm backing up my entire hard drive using
bvckup:)

That product name is funny though, I wouldn't know how to direct someone to it
verbally other than to say "I'll fb you the link"

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baddox
That entire website is a <table> tag, and I'm OK with that.

~~~
huhtenberg
And so is HN. Are you OK with that too?

