Do you agree with The Economist’s viewpoint?
There’s only one print publication that still makes its way to my mailbox, at that’s The Economist.
Last week’s Schumpeter column talks about the state of company naming, and paints a rather bleak picture. You should read the entire article, but here are a few interesting parts:
Copyright law is a pain: companies have to go to great lengths to make sure that nobody has staked a claim to their favourite names.
C’mon, Economist. I expect better of you. That is trademark law, not copyright.
The biggest culprit is the internet: companies put a premium on finding convenient “domain names” that direct you to their websites, but many of the good ones have already been grabbed by name speculators.
Yes, there’s a premium for good names.
[The tech inudustry] is also responsible for a lot of tripe. Too many tech companies are either tediously wacky (Yahoo) or overly familiar (PayPal).
I’m not sure I agree. Yahoo is a wacky, but memorable, name. And PayPal is only overly familiar because it’s been such a dominate brand for over a decade.
Tech firms are as plagued by naming-imitation as by product-imitation: witness the fashion for incorporating “Buzz” in your name (after BuzzFeed) or the “-ify” suffix (after Spotify).
Hey Bill Doshier, do you like that?
I agree that the “me too” approach many startups take to naming is causing style fatigue. “-ly” is another suffix that is used a lot.
Kevin Murphy says
And Yahoo is actually a dictionary word.
janedoe says
Though Yahoo Serious did try to sue Yahoo when they named themselves. Didn’t succeed obviously, though things may have been different if he had branded himself better and had a better understanding of IP law prior to Yahoo coming along
Bob says
Good post Andrew and equally surprised at the sloppy writing, if I had time to read one magazine from cover to cover every week it would be The Economist.
@domains says
There are only so many good names to go around, and the world is growing and new companies spring up every day.
Joseph Peterson says
Take away all the morose whinging and sullen holier-than-thou posturing from this article in “The Economist”, and what is left?