I agree with the "must have .com" mentality, unless you're targeting a tech-savvy market specifically, then you can get away with the domain hacking (.us, .ly, .me, etc.)
However, let's be honest: your name is not going to make or break you. Don't let choosing a name hold up real progress. If you're sitting there trying to decide what to name your svn/git repo, just call it "myapp" and move on.
"Fatbrain.com," I thought, hurt Computer Literacy Books when it decided to broaden its brand and go public.
The name was professionally chosen and got favorable write-ups at the time (2000 era). Though memorable, it somehow had a wrong feel for the nature of the company's business (selling tech-related books in Silicon Valley).
Agreed, don't let a name hold you from making progress. That said, continually hunting for a "better" one is worth it.
Case in point: I have an app (an interactive, online programming notebook), and it was originally called http://knoboo.com. Over the first year or so I agonized over people's butchering of the name, and confusion over the meaning. Over time, I was able to find a better name, http://codenode.org, and I'm very glad I did.
These days, the "word of mouth" is increasingly becoming the "word of fingers", as most viral ideas spread through typed media (email, forums, Facebook, blogs, messaging, Twitter...) much more than by spoken word.
I agree with you that a name shouldn't hold up progress, but a name can break you. My favorite example was taking the Chevy Nova to the Mexican market. Unfortunately, "no va" in Spanish means "doesn't go." Not the best name for a car.
I do, however, stand by the notion that a name can have a net negative impact on a product, especially in a day and age when much product discovery comes through search engines.
I agree overall. I do think there are some exceptions though. xpertsite.com is horrid, but I might suffer the problems if I could get XPert.com or xprt.com even. Maybe. They're so short that spelling or typing them is very easy.
Same with AskMe.com. It might be annoying, but that's a good domain, and a good name. I think IMSafer just sucks. IMSafe.com is way better.
The single most important thing in a product name these days is that it needs to be immediately spellable. Surprisingly, this is this single most common mistake that startups make when choosing a product name.
"Hey, check out my site biivo.com!"
"Ok, type-type-type... Uh, it's a domain squatter's parking page."
"No, it's spelled with two i's and only one v."
"Ohhhh. let me try again..."
The day I registered Twiddla.com, I also registered Twidla.com and a few other misspellings. People in the UK sometimes try going to Twiddler.com and there's not much we can do about it. Fortunately, we're the #3 Google result for "Twiddle", and we get about 5% of our search traffic from that keyword.
It's hard to imagine how much traffic these startups with missing letters and intentional misspellings are missing out on.
Be sure that you can obtain a trademark for your name from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (uspto.gov).
Be aware of the "gotchas" in what are considered acceptable trademarks.
For instance, under U.S. law, a "geographically (mis)-descriptive" trade name is often very difficult to trademark.
Furthermore, trademarks are often not addressed by OSI-approved open-source licenses (The GPL, for example). Therefore, obtaining a trademark for your open-source project can be a very effective way of de-comoditizing your open source project, achieving containment of forks, and building a revenue-generating business around your code base. Example: Red Hat vs Centos.
This is an excellent point. Trademarks are very important. We had to buy "IM Safe" as a trademark from a public company which had acquired the trademark in one of their acquisitions. They didn't even know they had it.
Trademarks are a tricky beast, and one that can get you a cease and desist letter from a lawyer, and I hate getting mail from lawyers.
During the late-90s bubble, a group of British radio stations chose the name koko.com for their internet presence.
Think about it - could you have found a worse name for something that's going to be read out on the radio repeatedly through the day? "Check out koko.com, that's kay-oh-kay-oh-dot-com."
Koko.com is long gone, but the practice remains. At present, I'm on a radio station with a hyphen in its domain name. I sound like I'm going dotty when I read out the email address. Infuriating. Don't do it!
My name is incredibly common and had been occupied in every conceivable domain extension (and in all the common email services) for years - so when they came out with .eu names, I preordered mine and managed to secure it. At least EU is a well-known acronym and less confusing than, say, .me.uk.
It's not ideal, I'd much rather have .co.uk or .com, but it's better than sticking numbers after my name @googlemail.com.
Gmail is fine, but having your own personal domain is always nice as well. People are conditioned to expect the .com, or .co.uk or whatever variant in your country. Remember, not everyone is a nerd/techie like us. .me is cool, but handing it to a 50 yr old potential business partner might get an eyebrow raise, and probably won't be memorable. At least not until they are more common.
what do you all think of the "empty vessel" concept for naming things - names that mean nothing immediately related to the product, but completely unused and un-liked a concept?
Fandango
Loopt
Amazon
Exxon
Texaco
Google (most people had no clue what a Googol was)
Pepsi
Nike
Coke
Wachovia
Verizon
Xerox
Sunoco
Sysco
Alcoa
Aetna
Tesoro
Exelon
Kroger
Nucor
Pfizer
the list goes on and on
By the way, I know there are many very clever "spins" on these names to help them relate to their products, but upon first look this isn't evident.
I wonder whether perfect names exist anymore. All the short, simple, meaningful names must be gone by now. Whatever you choose, you'll end up with something that's either long, irregular, hard to remember, overloaded or otherwise impaired. Which leads me to question: is the company name really that important? Or is myscream.com (squatted) a fine name for an emo icecream vendor?
However, let's be honest: your name is not going to make or break you. Don't let choosing a name hold up real progress. If you're sitting there trying to decide what to name your svn/git repo, just call it "myapp" and move on.