Technology: A Lot Rides On A Name

It started over a decade ago with technology and with Apple's iMac. Apple caught the imagination of a generation through the iPod, creating a whole family of products. Since then, technology start-up companies struggles to find that certain 'je ne sais quoi/name for their company, because a lot rides on a name, right?! Just look at Twitter, in just four years it has become an estimated $1.1 billion business and according to Global Language Monitor data for 2009, Twitter has become the most used word in the English language, 'Obama' was a close second! So, how did Twitter come up with its catchy name?

Matt Graves, a spokesman at Twitter gives some insight and says that his company's name was the result of a brainstorm between a small group of employees at Odeo, the San Francisco podcasting start-up where Twitter initially began as a side project, where they came up with possible names, including 'Jitter' and 'Twitter,' and put them in a hat"...the rest is history.

These days the race is on to coin the next weirdly memorable technology company name and the challenge is coming up with something powerful. Naseem Javed, founder of ABC Namebank, a New York-based consultant specialising in corporate brand names says, "The days of accidental naming are over. To stand out in the overcrowded global marketplace, a company's name must now be especially odd. Ten, twenty years ago you could start a business and take the name in any direction. Now, with 200 countries on the cyber-platform around the globe, finding the right name has become an expert's field."

More companies are now seeking professional advice about their identities and there are about 50 brand naming agencies globally, the majority of them launched within the last decade, according to DMOZ, the Internet's largest yellow pages. One of the most popular recent naming trends, according to Javed, is the Google-derived double-O. "A lot of companies feel that the double-O gives them some kind of comfort level. You have names like Joost, Wakoopa and iSkoot. There is a guiding principle in the double-O strategy. Basically, you put the double-O in the centre, and then you drop one letter on the left and one letter on the right. Hopefully it gives you some magic." Apparently, Google was coined by the founders' own misspelling of the numerical term 'googol'!

Naming has become like modern art and the true art of technology corporate naming is to be whacky, where companies seem to have created a name from a random combination of letters. Take Epizon and Zappos. The biggest mistake among name creators is over-thinking the language and forgetting that there needs to a story behind it too. Probably the best approach, in fact is may be to trust serendipity... now that's a name that says a lot about technology and the digital age.

Photo Credit: NatalieMaynor