“What is your name in my name?” - a stupid manual on choosing a startup name
I present to your review my first topic, in which I would like to share with readers amusing stories about the appearance of some sensational project names in the IT industry.
Initially, the working title in the future of a very popular service was simply “Status” or “Stat.us”. However, as time went on, the project entered the final stage of development and it was time to look for an official name. In search of a suitable name, the authors decided to focus on the similarity of their offspring with SMS service, therefore, it was decided to choose the name from the telephone-related subject. Thus, the word “twitch” arose, which, in their opinion, when pronounced, resembles the sound of a phone vibrating.
"We wanted to reflect in the title the idea that the user's thoughts literally make their friends' pockets buzz" - something like this, the creator of the service, Jack Dorsey, voiced his choice of name. But the word “twitch” seemed not entirely successful, so it was decided to look into the dictionaries of the words surrounding the pronunciation. And they got to the very point - “twitter”, which was defined as “an instantaneous surge / release of irrelevant information”. Another definition is bird chirping. The name was simply ideally associated with the idea of service and left no other choice.
Zynga is a social online gaming developer who created the epidemic called FarmVille. The company, in whose games monthly spend 270 million active users. A company whose value is estimated to be somewhere between 15 and 20 billion dollars. The company named founder Mark Pincus (Mark Pincus) ... ... in honor of his deceased dog - an American bulldog named Zinga.
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The most famous search engine in the world was created in 1996 under the name "BackRub". In 1998, the name changed to Google, derived from the mathematical term “googol” , meaning the number in decimal notation is represented by a unit with 100 zeros, which reflects the essence of a search engine that provides access to information of unlimited amounts.
In 1994, the site created by Stanford University faculty David Filo and Jerry Yang had a completely non-vocal title: "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." Then the name turned into “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” or abbreviated as Yahoo. Although the founders of the site also like to give another version: the name appeared in honor of a group of vile, wild and rude creations from Jonathan Swift's “Gulliver's Travels”. The name was chosen by Jerry and David at that time in their lives, when, according to their words, they felt that they were somewhat similar to these literary types. The name turned out scathing, memorable and successfully stuck.
Initially, the project was called “Sky peer-to-peer”, which reflected the essence of the technologies underlying it. This name was abbreviated to “Skyper”, however, when trying to register it, difficulties arose - such domain names already existed. Therefore, without further ado, the last “r” was dropped and the service received the name by which we know it - Skype.
In 1997, Bob Parsons founded Jomax Technologies. In 1999 it was decided to rename the company to something more memorable. Brainstorming was organized among the company's employees, and one of its participants suggested the name “Big Daddy”. The name seemed interesting, but it turned out to be busy. And then Bob offered a slightly modified version - “Go Daddy”, which was accepted. Why? “Because it makes people smile and settles in the memory,” says Bob. Well, in addition to this contribute to very memorable advertising moves of the company.
Having created an aggregator of discount services, the authors faced a serious problem - all the appropriate names that could be associated with the service are already taken. The search for the name turned into a headache - the days of painful choice, the money spent on domains and names that are consonant with them, which immediately caused discontent, irritation and were rejected as inappropriate. As a result, a list was formed of the names that did not cause the greatest rejection: streetcake, frankencity, 1gotham, citybat, noocher, zaxme. But satisfaction and this list did not bring. Then the idea was born.
I wanted to find a short, sonorous name. Probably almost everyone has ever heard the phrase "google it". “We hoped that the day would come when the service would become so popular that its name would be used in a similar sense,” said the authors of the project. So the idea was to use it at the end. Well, then a purely programmer approach triumphed. A simple Python script was written that generates the sequence [consonant] [vowel] [consonant] it.com. It turned out 2,205 variants of domain names. Of them at that time (May 2008) 400 were free. The names were generally terrible, but among them there was something that delighted the creators with its simplicity and brightness - yipit.com. A brief survey of friends confirmed the correctness of the choice, but most importantly - the very process of choosing the name took 30 minutes.
Twitter is an inessential chirping
Initially, the working title in the future of a very popular service was simply “Status” or “Stat.us”. However, as time went on, the project entered the final stage of development and it was time to look for an official name. In search of a suitable name, the authors decided to focus on the similarity of their offspring with SMS service, therefore, it was decided to choose the name from the telephone-related subject. Thus, the word “twitch” arose, which, in their opinion, when pronounced, resembles the sound of a phone vibrating.
"We wanted to reflect in the title the idea that the user's thoughts literally make their friends' pockets buzz" - something like this, the creator of the service, Jack Dorsey, voiced his choice of name. But the word “twitch” seemed not entirely successful, so it was decided to look into the dictionaries of the words surrounding the pronunciation. And they got to the very point - “twitter”, which was defined as “an instantaneous surge / release of irrelevant information”. Another definition is bird chirping. The name was simply ideally associated with the idea of service and left no other choice.
Zynga - about a poor bulldog put in a word
Zynga is a social online gaming developer who created the epidemic called FarmVille. The company, in whose games monthly spend 270 million active users. A company whose value is estimated to be somewhere between 15 and 20 billion dollars. The company named founder Mark Pincus (Mark Pincus) ... ... in honor of his deceased dog - an American bulldog named Zinga.
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Google - entertaining math
The most famous search engine in the world was created in 1996 under the name "BackRub". In 1998, the name changed to Google, derived from the mathematical term “googol” , meaning the number in decimal notation is represented by a unit with 100 zeros, which reflects the essence of a search engine that provides access to information of unlimited amounts.
Yahoo! from the house that Swift built
In 1994, the site created by Stanford University faculty David Filo and Jerry Yang had a completely non-vocal title: "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web." Then the name turned into “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle” or abbreviated as Yahoo. Although the founders of the site also like to give another version: the name appeared in honor of a group of vile, wild and rude creations from Jonathan Swift's “Gulliver's Travels”. The name was chosen by Jerry and David at that time in their lives, when, according to their words, they felt that they were somewhat similar to these literary types. The name turned out scathing, memorable and successfully stuck.
Skype is a victim of circumcision
Initially, the project was called “Sky peer-to-peer”, which reflected the essence of the technologies underlying it. This name was abbreviated to “Skyper”, however, when trying to register it, difficulties arose - such domain names already existed. Therefore, without further ado, the last “r” was dropped and the service received the name by which we know it - Skype.
GoDaddy - naughty daddy
In 1997, Bob Parsons founded Jomax Technologies. In 1999 it was decided to rename the company to something more memorable. Brainstorming was organized among the company's employees, and one of its participants suggested the name “Big Daddy”. The name seemed interesting, but it turned out to be busy. And then Bob offered a slightly modified version - “Go Daddy”, which was accepted. Why? “Because it makes people smile and settles in the memory,” says Bob. Well, in addition to this contribute to very memorable advertising moves of the company.
Yipit - programmer approach
Having created an aggregator of discount services, the authors faced a serious problem - all the appropriate names that could be associated with the service are already taken. The search for the name turned into a headache - the days of painful choice, the money spent on domains and names that are consonant with them, which immediately caused discontent, irritation and were rejected as inappropriate. As a result, a list was formed of the names that did not cause the greatest rejection: streetcake, frankencity, 1gotham, citybat, noocher, zaxme. But satisfaction and this list did not bring. Then the idea was born.
I wanted to find a short, sonorous name. Probably almost everyone has ever heard the phrase "google it". “We hoped that the day would come when the service would become so popular that its name would be used in a similar sense,” said the authors of the project. So the idea was to use it at the end. Well, then a purely programmer approach triumphed. A simple Python script was written that generates the sequence [consonant] [vowel] [consonant] it.com. It turned out 2,205 variants of domain names. Of them at that time (May 2008) 400 were free. The names were generally terrible, but among them there was something that delighted the creators with its simplicity and brightness - yipit.com. A brief survey of friends confirmed the correctness of the choice, but most importantly - the very process of choosing the name took 30 minutes.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/126428/
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