What’s in a name nayme naime mname?

Ok - I haven’t blogged in about 2 months, but this I just have to say.

Its about names. I have worked, in some capacity or another with about a dozen start ups, and maybe three dozen or more products. All of which had names.

Startups especially tend to spend an undue amount of time, and often money as well, on choosing one.

What is a name for? Its for identifying a product or company. I know your name. It means I can refer to you, talk about you, and others know who I mean.

So. Let’s talk about the online music company I consulted for that wanted to name themselves “Audacy”. Cute. I get it. But this is an audio thing. Anytime the name was mentioned, it would have to be spelled. Oy.

Or my recent client who wants to change a perfectly good, though 5 syllable, name to a 3 syllable one that is clever but unspellable and unreadable. I won’t mention Will by name (sorry Will - perhaps I can change your name to whylle) who has a geat idea with an absolutely inscrutable name.

People want their name to be clever, memorable, evocative of the intense thoughtfulness and wonderful qualities of their brand/company/product. They want it to become a “verb” like “Google”.

Horse manure.

If you are successful, then your name won’t matter. Who gives a second thought to coke, google, ebay, intuit, adobe, charmin, amazon, aol, fedex as to the quality of the word itself?

So - there’s not a ton of upside to a great name.

There is, however downside to a bad one. Like one that you can’t spell or remember, or get the URL to.

Here are the 3 laws of acceptable product and company names.

Breaking them does not mean you’ll fail, it means you have an extra challenge that you could have avoided. And aren’t there enough when you’re trying to launch something successful?

So -

1. You gotta be able to get the URL.

I know its hard these days, and this motivates people to all sorts of twisted spellings and such. But here’s number 2:

2. It should be obvious how to spell it.

I hear about it from a friend, i go check it out. Except if I can’t find it cause you spelled it Cynergy (sorry guys). This is ANTI-MARKETING. you are loosing people before they can even get interested. Word of mouth? Doesn’t work! Yeah- most people will send a link. But I still have actual conversations with people - don’t you?

3. It should, please, be obvious how to pronounce it.

So my friend, Whylle - the way he pronounces it makes it make some sense. But I he had to spell it out for me, so to speak. Same with the little 5 syllable to 3 syllable company.

I expect both of these companies to meet with some measure of success. 5 syllables, in fact, really rocks (I don’t know as much about Whylle’s company yet - stay tuned, cause after this I’ll owe him some good press, if I like it). But this success would come just a touch easier if they got a name that worked for them, instead of against them.

Oh yeah, Audacy? They blew half their operating budget on getting a new name, and that was good indication of their general decision making ability.

So one last thought on this - if you’re spending more time or money on your name and logo than on making sure your product knocks it out of the park for your intended users - then its time to re-think. Are you futzing with the name because you feel blocked on other fronts? Or is it perhaps time to take a breath and get focused again on what matters - providing value for people who care in a way that has a reasonable chance of paying the rent.

faithfully yours,

ddebbbbb_B

value proposition - the threshold

Again I find myself in lots of discussions about value propositions. This time in the context of Enterprise software. The same rule holds.

A person will start to use software when using it is easier than not using it.

In the case of Enterprise software, sometimes “easier” can be a little different - like its absolutely required or you won’t get paid. But basically, there are 2 things you can do to tip the balance. The first is to do something so valuable, that people want to use it. The second is to do something so much easier than people can do it now, that people will use it. This kind of means that the less you offer the easier it must be to do it, or conversely, the more you offer, the more people will put up with.

Enterprise software is a little different - the people who use the software are rarely the people who bought it. People use it because they’re told to, or because its the only way to get certain information. So enterprise software companies haven’t bothered to make the tools easy to use, and integrators, like SAP, Accenture, etc., don’t help that situation much.

The good news is that its slowly changing. People who use enterprise software are also consumers, and their expectation is that stuff should work. Good work, software dudes. 15 years ago all software sucked. Now, most consumer software’s pretty usable. Our expectations have been raised, and the enterprise is next.

The rush of ideas

What does Web 2.0 mean to me? Recently, just a rush of ideas -  I’ve gotten back in touch with that time of life when my heart would beat faster, and I’d forget to eat, and I’d ignore everything for an idea, running around, trying to explain it to anyone who’d listen (got lots of blank stares as a kid. my sister at one point declared that I could no longer communicate with normal people).

And the thing is - its not really an online thing. Its an offline thing powered by an online thing. Twitter, TED, BIL, FOWA, Startup Weekend, Bar Camp - these don’t happen on line - they’re shared online. They spread that way. I meet someone (like Brian Williams at Viget Labs) and he points me to someone (like Andrew Hyde) who points me to someone like Micah or Laura Fitton, and life gets more and more interesting.  I have a crush on every person and idea. And suddenly just showing up has power. Everyone’s an amplifier.

I’m missing BIL this week (not to mention FOWA and SWSX, abd TED), and I’m profoundly disappointed. I can’t wait to see what a wiki organized, only organically promoted and organized event can actually produce. I think it will be life-changing for the people who go.

The Distant Voice of the Customer

My current project (full time) has been challenging  - its so different from what I’ve done in the past that its taken me a while to get grounded, identify the key challenges and plan of attack. I’m working with enterprise software.

Now this particular software, digital asset management software, is powerful stuff - to the point of the near magical. It - when properly applied - powers creativity, collaboration and distribution of some of the worlds most interesting and valuable rich media.

But its enterprise software, which, I’m coming to understand, means that it must also be somewhat of a chameleon. It gets customized, enhanced, and integrated in nearly every installation. And the customer list reads like a who’s who of several media-intensive industries.

So - as a new leader for this product, there are several huge challenges that make it very different from the consumer software I’ve lived with.

First - the value proposition. Its a rare consumer company that can spit out its value proposition cleanly at any given time. (Course, think of the ones who actually can - google, intuit, ebay - notice anything?).  For a highly customizable giant of enterprise software, well, they certainly don’t have any less of a challenge there.

Second - the voice of the customer. Enterprise products are not sold to an individual, but to a committee, and not to the end users, but to someone who has various motivations, hopefully one of which is to enable those end users to do something, better.

So - the voice of the customer - which I’ve gotten pretty good at seeking out in the consumer world is now in a different place. And I’m trying to chase it down. I’m starting with customer visits - but frequently you meet with the IT folks responsible for implementing the solution - not with the people who feel the need, or the people who will be using it.

The team is all in agreement about the need to find the voice - and is pursuing several ways of getting there (hey - you heard of this web 2.0 thing? its pretty cool, and fortunately, they have).   I’m not sure how the company will feel about it, but I think that the pursuit of this voice is important, and I hope to document how we get closer to it, and how that intimacy changes things.

Different can hit deeper

My pal Jesse Thomas posted this on his blog. Its a heartfelt, artistic, creative and just lovely tribute to Obama. But its not just a tribute to Obama - its a tribute to doing something very differently.

It redefines the bar for political videos or ads. It follows no formula. I’m not (necessarily) an Obama person.

If we’re striving to be transformational - to knock it completely out of the park, we need to be willing to reconceive the status quo. Its difficult to describe a product to someone without using something else as a frame of reference. But its impossible to create something transformational by using something else as a standard. I’m sure a guy could say something about that huge Giants play in the Super Bowl here that would be apropos. All I can say is that this video, for a presidential candidate, is a million times better than anything that came before it, and bears almost no resemblance to any other political ad I’ve ever seen.

The painfully obvious corollary point: Just because the successful people all do it a certain way doesn’t mean we all should. “Bill Clintons ads all do this”. “Facebook does it this way”. “Well, that’s the standard”. I just don’t want to hear it.

The old way is fine, and can suffice, can be improved upon and leveraged. But if you’re thinking bigger, If you have passion, if you have vision, you can do it different and make something that is so much better. Of course this isn’t enough to be successful. You still need to connect that vision to the market. You need to find a channel to that market, and you need to make it useful and fabulous. But its one of those necessary (if insufficient) components.

The Mac, Sesame Street, Catch 22, Craigslist, Google and on and on. What’s the most different and most successful re-thinking of a product that you’ve seen?

2 hints that the future has indeed arrived

Web 2.0 or, as I prefer, the “Participatory Web” is basically about increasing participation, and not all of it is revolutionary. Some is, at best, a new way to socialize or self-aggrandize. At worst-  a big waste of time.

But there are some wildly interesting things out there too. Here are two things that struck me as glimpses into the (not yet evenly distributed) future.

What would you add to this list to expand this little spy-hole onto what’s next.

1. The library of congress has posted its photos on Flickr (the most popular photo sharing site) - in order to get the public to help tag/narrate them.

2. Lessig’s read/write vision. If you haven’t yet, just watch it. I promise you won’t find it a waste of time. (if you do, you can slam me in the comments)

What else?

Glassbooth: Perfect - but why keep it a secret??

I was “facebooked” a link to Glassbooth. It is a very well done, non-partisan tool to help you explore the candidate’s positions and how well they match yours. Its fun, quick, and thought provoking. And it doesn’t make me feel as though I need to be radically one thing or another. And it doesn’t make me feel under or misinformed.

In other words - its unusually good.

But here’s how I’d like to see them expand their value and influence:

1. Hey guys - an “email this to a friend” link?

2. Even better - make it a facebook widget that sticks around. (Here are my 5 product requirements for social media widgets)

3. Begin a dialog on facebook and on their native site. Create an “add your question or comment here” spot. see and respond to the questions and comments of others. These are topical, important issues that people want to engage on - if they can do it without being shrill or having people be shrill back, or make them feel stupid.

Fill out the survey. Ask people their opinions. Ask people what they do and don’t feel they understand and know about. Make adding the widget part of a super group where there’s real stuff on the notice and comment board. You know - things like - how many of you feel like you know the difference between x and y. Or - this is how the No Child Left Behind act works and doesn’t.

4. Provide links to clear, non-partisan or at least bi-partisan info on key issues. Not all of us feel knowledgeable enough to have strong opinions on economic or health issues.

5. Create an opportunity for the community to engage with the ideas here.

(isn’t it funny how the most divisive issues in our country seem the simpest - civil rights, abortion, etc - people know, or think they know deeply, and the most complex issues, people are mushy about. Human issues versus administrative issues. Human issues are issues everyone understands and therefor have strong opinions about. Hm. Note to self - make all issues simple issues.)

5 steps to Web 2.0

Some people have been doing the Web 2.0 rhumba for years. But not everyone. Here’s how I got started.  I’m still on step 5.

Click on it to see the whole thing.

Anybody care to add to it? Have a different path in?

New media makes talk a lot closer to action

At first it was just email - as soon as you thought about someone, you could jot off a note, without searching for paper, stamps, your address book, getting it written, putting it in the mail etc.

Then it was IM - even more immediate.

Then it was these blogs - think a thought, type a thought, and boom, its published to the world (or the very small subsection of it that reads my blog). (Pro - more thoughts out there, lower barriers. Cons - not everything is as high quality as you might like.)

Now - I have an ear out to truly remarkable people that I might have never known about or met. Through Twitter, and Facebook, I have a very up close view of what they are thinking about and doing. Through Wikis, email, twitter, this blog, facebook and dozens of other websites, I can act almost as quickly as I find out about things. New conferences that are likely to collect wildly interesting groups of people - not only can I register, I can get involved. Contacting people about projects and expertise that I never would have tracked down, without this new social networking thing. Donating money to help women in Africa start businesses to support their families and communities. Keeping my imagination charged with the ideas and activities of others…. its pretty darn cool.

And another thing is going on. When I’m away from the internet - it seems so quiet. And I haven’t even begun to really get into things like digg yet.

So - what’s the next step in eliminating boundaries? If we look at Web 2.0 as the participatory web - a slightly different slant than the “social web” - then what are the possibilities? How can we make it easier to expand and achieve our goals, our dreams through technology?

Web 2.0 and Digital Asset Management

Yesterday, I gave a talk to people developing high end DAM solutions about how Web 2.0 is affecting DAM. In short, Web 2.0 is creating a proliferation of media, changing the process of creation, collaboration and use, and driving the need for DAM solutions to integrate with more tools and think about metadata a bit differently. Moreover, Web 2.0 is changing how major media producers think about new ways to use their assets.

Here are the slides. Web 2.0 and DAM