51–60 of 75 posts
At first, I agree. But then I look at my running programs: emacs, Steam, Safari, Python, Clojure, along with the more descriptive Finder, iChat, iTerm2, Mail. Somehow, I think the problem has more to do with how obtrusive or how much interaction you have with a program rather than the name. What would you call Ninite?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that there's something more going on than a simple naming issue over here. As a product you're exactly in the right place to be. You see, your product isn't something "cool" that people should use. It's now a fact of life. It's an extension of your users environment. This means that they take it for granted, because they just can't imagine life without it. That's an amazing position to be in for a product. Th…
Thanks, this is a really great compliment. One of my favorite things about Ninite is that we get thank you letters from grandmothers who hear about us on the local news and orders from Fortune 500 companies for the same basic product.
I'm a co-founder of Ninite. We hear this a lot, but I don't think it's a big deal. Traffic has been growing well since we launched and we install 1,000,000 apps every week now. The real problem is that there's not really a term for what we do. The key part in all these stories is that even searching for us is hard. We're doing something totally new so we might as well call it something totally new. I'm also just aest…
I'm a co-founder of Ninite. We hear this a lot, but I don't think it's a big deal. Traffic has been growing well since we launched and we install 1,000,000 apps every week now. The real problem is that there's not really a term for what we do. The key part in all these stories is that even searching for us is hard. We're doing something totally new so we might as well call it something totally new. I'm also just aest…
I think the reason for your success is that Ninite is simply an excellent product. If your product is truly great, it'll usually overcome problems in naming, promotion, design, etc. (I remember there was a Joel on Software post about how Naptster's UI design was terrible, but it didn't matter, because it was Napster). But, we'll never know how successful Ninite could have been had it been easier to remember. Of out c…
Naming is easy.
I think that statement is rather ironic, given the nature of this submission.
I'm a co-founder of Ninite. We hear this a lot, but I don't think it's a big deal. Traffic has been growing well since we launched and we install 1,000,000 apps every week now. The real problem is that there's not really a term for what we do. The key part in all these stories is that even searching for us is hard. We're doing something totally new so we might as well call it something totally new. I'm also just aest…
People click links, most only click one time in their life and never get back. For those who end up using it they will take the time to either bookmark it the browsers history will most often be enough. Would it be better with an easy to decipher name? Sure. But it's not a law.
Good product is what matter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the reason for your success is that Ninite is simply an excellent product. If your product is truly great, it'll usually overcome problems in naming, promotion, design, etc. (I remember there was a Joel on Software post about how Naptster's UI design was terrible, but it didn't matter, because it was Napster). But, we'll never know how successful Ninite could have been had it been easier to remember. Of out c…
I bet we'd be exactly as successful with a better name. Are there examples of products where an awesome name made them into successes? Or even had a significant impact? I'm sure you could tank a product with an offensive name or something that required weird unicode characters. But I think it's only worth getting a passing grade on the name and then going for an A+ on the product. I guess the argument is that if you'…
Pepsi Max built a whole market out of guys who didn't want to be seen asking for a "diet" soda.
I have this problem with nearly every startup mentioned on HN -- it's not that some of them don't have good names -- there's just too many of them. Then, when I have the actual problem that I saw the solution for, they have no SEO yet, so I can't find them by description. The best solution for this is what Hipmunk is doing -- no way I'd remember it except -- they buy lots of remarketing style ads. I clicked through t…
Don't forget the mascot ;) we're the travel search that's chipmunk without the "C."
It's so cheesy, it works!
VLC is another tool I had trouble memorizing the name of. "VideoLAN? That must be something different..."