Re-using Failed Company Names From Web 1.0?
from the they're-baaaaaaaack,-sort-of dept
Alarm:clock has a post talking about how Xoom, an online competitor to Western Union for sending cash around the world, has
raised a lot of money from a bunch of top tier VC firms. However, the name stood out, because Xoom was the name of one of the more ridiculously overhyped (and underdelivering) dot coms of the first bubble era. It's clear that this Xoom has nothing to do with the original Xoom, but it seems odd that a company would want to associate itself with a company that had a terrible reputation, constantly over-promoted itself, and kept trying to come up with a an idea that actually worked (their main thing was selling clip art, but they were mostly known for being a GeoCities clone). The company did eventually sucker NBC into buying it and merging it with its own struggling Snap/NBCi web portal, before the whole thing collapsed due to the complete pointlessness of the offering (Snap.com having also recently been reborn as a new, totally unrelated company). It's fun to
mock the names of some web 2.0 companies, but are the naming choices really that thin that it's worth bringing back names that were closely associated with big flameouts and only died a few years ago?
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Brand recognition
These company names are HOUSEHOLD brand names that cost a company billions in advertising to make sure you remember their name. And since the public's memory is incredibly short it's rare to find someone that remembers that Atari and others actually went bankrupt years ago. All the new company has to do is get a product out there and make sure the public knows about it, in effect let them know they are still around.
It's a major win to grab a household word as your company name. If you can't find a household word, just follow Microsoft's example and grab something descriptive from the house itself:
word
office
windows
notepad
power
point
...etc etc.
Add Your Comment