They have quite good categorization of names that helps you think about different names: functional/descriptive, invented, experiential, evocative.
Specifically, they use term 'experiential name' for names that hint or evoke an idea what the product does, but reserve term 'evocative' for positioning. Virgin is a prime example of evocative name, while e.g. Infoseek is a experiential name.
A quote from the manual:
One important way that evocative names differ from others is that they evoke the positioning of a company or product, rather than describing a function or a direct
experience
The guide also highlights how there can be initial resistance for great (evocative) names. For example, consider Virgin Airlines:
"But public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional!" or
I think things have changed a lot since then (it has been half a decade), but it's still mostly right.
Better to be Heroku.com than Cloudhosting.com then and now. But I wouldn't want to be launching Del.icio.us or Flickr.com in 2011.
These days I think you're far better off with simple/short/spellable domains like: Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com.
For consumer-facing web companies these strike the right balance of credibility and hipness. You won't find domains like these unregistered. You'll have to buy them off someone.
For business-to-business companies domains are somewhat less important, names like: Mixpanel.com, KISSmetrics.com, Mixrank.com, Olark.com, Heroku.com will do the job perfectly fine.
With the possible exception of groupon and dropbox, all of those names would very expensive to acquire. The problem is that a startup typically has to pick a name before they have $50000+ to drop on a domain.
Yep! The internet's user base has expanded so much, especially in the last decade, that formal names are no longer marketable for a lot of different purposes. They will appear boring and dull. Increasingly, the trend on the internet is to entice potential users with relatively fast paced, easily understood branding. Anything other than a short name will be lost from memory amidst a sea of shirter, more poignant and imaginative names (which often ride on the value of their recognition than pragmatism).
>> These days I think you're far better off with simple/short/spellable domains like: Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com.
Without a doubt. Don't leave out Orange.com and Hellow.com.
One of the things discussed here that isn't as frankly discussed in detail is the diminishing value of a one-word name. A startup such as "color" has little value in selecting such a name, at least comparative to the value the name has itself. As Graham discusses, a little iteration, many beers and constant thinking could probably create a name that would only be slightly less effective.
Wufoo is such an example. Both are short but with both, I literally have no idea what they do at first mention. But they're both memorable and fit generally good brand rules - while Wufoo, undoubtedly, was a much cheaper domain.
But the one-word benefit is strong, and tangible, with a domain such as "shirts.com". Here, there is real and significant SEO benefit, as well as potential branding benefit when posited correctly. When not attached to the physical product - or at least without significant "what the hell this does" connotation - the value of a one-word domain is really not that significant comparative to the perceived mass market value of many of these domains.
This whole problem would be solved if .com's cost $100+ per year to register. Don't have that kind of money? Get a different TLD. I'm tired of having every single name I can think of -- even bad ones -- already registered and unused.
Yeah, sort of a stretch. What I thought pushed it off the fence though was that it's a whole adverbial phrase which is pretty cool and in the same spirit as verbability. "Should we sell this stuff brick-and-mortar or viaweb?"
Worked for mint.com though. Maybe it's more appropriate for a finance service than a kewl social network. I'm sure there's some advantage for a b2b service having an official-sounding one-word domain.
I may be biased here, but I don't understand the animosity toward exact-match domain names. The claim is made that such a name is uncool, but an explanation, for why this is so, is not self-evident.
This is probably the fifth essay I've read on the subject, and they all really agree. Google was being highly eccentric in choosing their brand name when they started up, and it was comparatively rare back then. But look how fantastically successful it is now. It's even more relevant in the current market. The easiest and most permanent way to make an impression, and thus, a user base is with attention grabbing. Beyond that, the creativity will do hakf the work for brand recognition, and repeat patronage will be secured.
The categorization rankings seem pretty subjective. I read somewhere that your best bet, if possible, is to call your company what it does. If your software emails timed newsletters, call it newsletter or emailer and keep working around that until you find something available.
I hid the bracketed comments and images. After looking through them they don't seem to add anything to the conversation. I don't want commentary on an article as I'm reading it.
Can someone explain the criteria for each of the tags given in the article? For instance, the "google" tag presumably means "if you google this term, the startup will likely be on the first page of results" (or maybe it means something else?) Is agreeability essentially the same thing (Eg: a unique word) or is it something else? What decides whether something is yellow or red in the "mis-spellings"?
We've got a really great name for our startup, and I'd like to evaluated it by other people's criteria (though, unfortunately, I'm not ready to mention it publicly, since we're still securing everything.) The "really great" aspect of it is a gut feeling, so, I could be wrong.
EVOC Evocativity Conveys at least a hint of what it’s naming
BREV Brevity Shorter = better
GREP Greppability Not a substring of common words
GOOG Googlability Reasonably unique (and domain name available)
PRON Pronounceability You can read it out loud when you see it
SPEL Spellability You know how it’s spelled when you hear it
VERB Verbability The name (or variant thereof) can be used as a verb
I think it mostly has to do with loaded terms. If you company is called "cool.com", it's a loaded term and searching for something related to the company will yield a lot of false positives - e.g. cool cms.
Goddamnit, startups. I should write a post of my own about this because it really pisses me off.
Here is my advice about startup names: Stop It. Seriously though, stop it. You know what I mean: the cute little misspellings, the nonsense words, the dropped schwas in your words...Stop all this bullshit before people begin to think every startup is, like yours, nothing more than hot air.
It's that simple: stupid name, stupid business. Your cutesy little letter drop / intentional, web-domain-grubbing letter substitution name speaks volumes about the probable quality of your business.
You fucking soak that shit in because this is the best goddamn company name on the planet: "The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles". And this is China's most popular search engine.
You know why this is a goddamned great name? Because it took more than 10 seconds to make up. This name is so far removed from cutesy it is absurd.
If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire fucking English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your business.
Sometimes in musing about the Turing test I think: this shit works two ways. This is not a test of computers at the peak of their creative intelligence, but of man at the lowest point of his machine-like worst.
Does the fact that a machine can make up your business's name in a matter of sub-seconds at all scare you into realizing the cheapness of it all? "Oyodo", "Topicpad", "Rhysero"...
Worthless, reproducible, empty.
Take a look at Apple, even. A soft, fleshy, human, fruit. When it first started, who was it competing against? IBM. DEC. Cincom -- Ugly, faceless, consumer-hostile.
If you've learned anything today, let it be this: take your goddamned time. Your rush to buy a domain name has clouded your vision of what your company is and could be. You have cheapened the potentially meaningful creation of goods and services by, ironically, thinking of things in purely monetary terms. The next time you're on the verge of dropping that silent 'e' and calling it a day, think about Song Dynasty poets and creative visionaries. Think about the entire history of human thought and the struggle to give meaning to a confusing planetary existence, and ask yourself: Wouldn't my name, which appears to be a cross between the words "Rhinoceros" and "Serotonin", be out of place here?
EDIT: any reason for the downvotes? Sure there was cussing, but what are the grounds for your disagreement?
Nobody is disagreeing with you. That's not what downvotes are for here. You were downvoted for tone.
The community is telling you that you're being offensive and that it would appreciate it if you either changed your tone to be more civil, or left.
Try a quick experiment: rewrite this exact post with a calm, positive tone and repost it side by side with the original. I wouldn't be surprised to find it float to the top of the discussion.
It's hard for me to evaluate Baidu as a name since it's targeted at Chinese speakers but the literal meaning is apparently just "hundreds of times" (interesting parallel with Google, come to think of it). I don't see any brilliant connection with that poem. It was just "inspired by it", like how Yahoo's name was "inspired by" by a 300-year-old book by Jonathan Swift.
You may have a point about cutesy names but it probably boils down to a warning to try to be timeless instead of trendy.
Violating spellability is less of a problem than you'd think. People seem sufficiently used to alternate spellings. And mostly the name won't be conveyed by literal word-of-mouth. You see the weird spelling and it kind of sticks. Examples abound: google vs googol, youtube vs utube, digg vs dig, reddit vs readit/redit, stickk vs stick, wii vs wee (or we or oui).
Besides, it's often worth the hit to spellability to fare better on greppability and googlability. Or even the incremental bump on brevity (looking at you, vowel-droppers).
Here's StickK nailing every other criterion (the extra K even lends slightly more evocativity — K is the legal abbreviation for contract) by sacrificing spellability...
> If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire deleted English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your business.
Sounds like something that should be testable, given a dictionary and some time to write a script that look up domain names. Any takers?
[+] [-] dirtyaura|14 years ago|reply
They have quite good categorization of names that helps you think about different names: functional/descriptive, invented, experiential, evocative. Specifically, they use term 'experiential name' for names that hint or evoke an idea what the product does, but reserve term 'evocative' for positioning. Virgin is a prime example of evocative name, while e.g. Infoseek is a experiential name.
A quote from the manual:
One important way that evocative names differ from others is that they evoke the positioning of a company or product, rather than describing a function or a direct experience
The guide also highlights how there can be initial resistance for great (evocative) names. For example, consider Virgin Airlines:
"But public wants airlines to be experienced, safe and professional!" or
"Religious people will be offended"
Or Caterpillar:
"Tiny, creepy-crawly bug",
"Not macho enough – easy to squash",
"Why not "bull" or "workhorse" "?
It's a great read.
[+] [-] staunch|14 years ago|reply
Better to be Heroku.com than Cloudhosting.com then and now. But I wouldn't want to be launching Del.icio.us or Flickr.com in 2011.
These days I think you're far better off with simple/short/spellable domains like: Fab.com, Batch.com, Groupon.com, Mint.com, Dropbox.com, Airtime.com, Oink.com.
For consumer-facing web companies these strike the right balance of credibility and hipness. You won't find domains like these unregistered. You'll have to buy them off someone.
For business-to-business companies domains are somewhat less important, names like: Mixpanel.com, KISSmetrics.com, Mixrank.com, Olark.com, Heroku.com will do the job perfectly fine.
[+] [-] btmorex|14 years ago|reply
With the possible exception of groupon and dropbox, all of those names would very expensive to acquire. The problem is that a startup typically has to pick a name before they have $50000+ to drop on a domain.
[+] [-] dylangs1030|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwallaceparker|14 years ago|reply
Without a doubt. Don't leave out Orange.com and Hellow.com.
[+] [-] InfinityX0|14 years ago|reply
Wufoo is such an example. Both are short but with both, I literally have no idea what they do at first mention. But they're both memorable and fit generally good brand rules - while Wufoo, undoubtedly, was a much cheaper domain.
But the one-word benefit is strong, and tangible, with a domain such as "shirts.com". Here, there is real and significant SEO benefit, as well as potential branding benefit when posited correctly. When not attached to the physical product - or at least without significant "what the hell this does" connotation - the value of a one-word domain is really not that significant comparative to the perceived mass market value of many of these domains.
[+] [-] btmorex|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilk|14 years ago|reply
"I viawebbed that store." "We're going to viaweb our platform"... I think not.
[+] [-] dreeves|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eavc|14 years ago|reply
"Should we do a call or would you rather viaweb?"
[+] [-] dy|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _pius|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmahemoff|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidhansen|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylangs1030|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreeves|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sumukh1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apparatchik|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Timothee|14 years ago|reply
I checked because it didn't feel that old.
[+] [-] dreeves|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaosprophet|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreeves|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robjohnson|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssp|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdenya|14 years ago|reply
I hid the bracketed comments and images. After looking through them they don't seem to add anything to the conversation. I don't want commentary on an article as I'm reading it.
[+] [-] davi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nirvana|14 years ago|reply
We've got a really great name for our startup, and I'd like to evaluated it by other people's criteria (though, unfortunately, I'm not ready to mention it publicly, since we're still securing everything.) The "really great" aspect of it is a gut feeling, so, I could be wrong.
[+] [-] buddydvd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irahul|14 years ago|reply
I think it mostly has to do with loaded terms. If you company is called "cool.com", it's a loaded term and searching for something related to the company will yield a lot of false positives - e.g. cool cms.
[+] [-] bitemyapp|14 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jwallaceparker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreeves|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smugengineer69|14 years ago|reply
Here is my advice about startup names: Stop It. Seriously though, stop it. You know what I mean: the cute little misspellings, the nonsense words, the dropped schwas in your words...Stop all this bullshit before people begin to think every startup is, like yours, nothing more than hot air.
It's that simple: stupid name, stupid business. Your cutesy little letter drop / intentional, web-domain-grubbing letter substitution name speaks volumes about the probable quality of your business.
Look at Chinese search engine Baidu （百度）. Startups of the world, I want you to read this shit: http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr... .
In fact, thee of poor orthography, you read this shit twice: http://ir.baidu.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=188488&p=irol-homepr... .
You fucking soak that shit in because this is the best goddamn company name on the planet: "The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles". And this is China's most popular search engine.
You know why this is a goddamned great name? Because it took more than 10 seconds to make up. This name is so far removed from cutesy it is absurd.
If the only way, in this infinite plain of possibility that is the entire fucking English language, for you to find an unregistered domain is to misspell already-existing words, I feel supremely sorry for you and your business.
Sometimes in musing about the Turing test I think: this shit works two ways. This is not a test of computers at the peak of their creative intelligence, but of man at the lowest point of his machine-like worst.
You want a dime-a-dozen bullshit startup name? Go here, press a button and BAM: http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html
Does the fact that a machine can make up your business's name in a matter of sub-seconds at all scare you into realizing the cheapness of it all? "Oyodo", "Topicpad", "Rhysero"...
Worthless, reproducible, empty.
Take a look at Apple, even. A soft, fleshy, human, fruit. When it first started, who was it competing against? IBM. DEC. Cincom -- Ugly, faceless, consumer-hostile.
If you've learned anything today, let it be this: take your goddamned time. Your rush to buy a domain name has clouded your vision of what your company is and could be. You have cheapened the potentially meaningful creation of goods and services by, ironically, thinking of things in purely monetary terms. The next time you're on the verge of dropping that silent 'e' and calling it a day, think about Song Dynasty poets and creative visionaries. Think about the entire history of human thought and the struggle to give meaning to a confusing planetary existence, and ask yourself: Wouldn't my name, which appears to be a cross between the words "Rhinoceros" and "Serotonin", be out of place here?
EDIT: any reason for the downvotes? Sure there was cussing, but what are the grounds for your disagreement?
[+] [-] jasonkester|14 years ago|reply
The community is telling you that you're being offensive and that it would appreciate it if you either changed your tone to be more civil, or left.
Try a quick experiment: rewrite this exact post with a calm, positive tone and repost it side by side with the original. I wouldn't be surprised to find it float to the top of the discussion.
[+] [-] dreeves|14 years ago|reply
You may have a point about cutesy names but it probably boils down to a warning to try to be timeless instead of trendy.
I actually think purposeful misspellings can be a good idea. To quote myself from http://messymatters.com/nominology :
Violating spellability is less of a problem than you'd think. People seem sufficiently used to alternate spellings. And mostly the name won't be conveyed by literal word-of-mouth. You see the weird spelling and it kind of sticks. Examples abound: google vs googol, youtube vs utube, digg vs dig, reddit vs readit/redit, stickk vs stick, wii vs wee (or we or oui).
Besides, it's often worth the hit to spellability to fare better on greppability and googlability. Or even the incremental bump on brevity (looking at you, vowel-droppers).
Here's StickK nailing every other criterion (the extra K even lends slightly more evocativity — K is the legal abbreviation for contract) by sacrificing spellability...
[+] [-] vetler|14 years ago|reply
Sounds like something that should be testable, given a dictionary and some time to write a script that look up domain names. Any takers?
[+] [-] casca|14 years ago|reply
* evidence of this is left as an exercise to the reader
[+] [-] jwallaceparker|14 years ago|reply