That entire website is a tag, and I'm OK with that.
How Bvckup got its name
11–20 of 25 posts
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#12I wondering how long the process took.
And kudos on your site design ... it made me go look at the actual site ... and download the software and now I'm backing up my entire hard drive using bvckup:)
That product name is funny though, I wouldn't know how to direct someone to it verbally other than to say "I'll fb you the link"
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#13This post seems to miss three important considerations: trademarks, domains & "spellability". With respect to trademarks, it's worth taking a few minutes on uspto.gov to understand the trademark landscape of your potential name. Secondly, with respect to domains, it's worth assessing how much your desired name will cost you. It is very rare to find a half-way decent name that has not been registered, but many are eit…
First two points - fully agreed. I should've mentioned the domain name availability, it is indeed the first coarse filter for rejecting name candidates. > if someone can't spell your name after hearing it, it's a fail. Practically speaking - why is it a fail? Who are the prospective users that I am going to loose over this?
Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio.
Or rather, every user who doesn't because the producer can't work out how to pronounce it, so it never goes on the teleprompter.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bee-vee-cup , but here's the thing - in two years of it being in beta this has never come up as a real issue. I guess this can impede a word of (physical) mouth to a degree, but the assumption here is that few people are going to need to actually pronouce the name. Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as its…
> Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as its predominant usage is online. I'm not sure how your examples there help you at all. Each of them have clear pronunciation: dribble, forest, XKCD each letter spelled out. bee-vee-cup is not intuitive at all. If you show the logo to me I would have guessed "Backup" w…
Examples don't mean to help, they were meant to illustrate the point that followed. The ease of pronunciation and the ability to spell the name from its audible form are not all that important in the online context. This is a conjecture, not a fact, but based on what I've seen so far it appears to be a valid one.
Moreover that stumble that your brain does when seeing it for the first time, it makes the name memorable. Compare to something like "Super Backup" - fine, easy flowing name, all clear. A week passes, and what do you remember? Was it a "super" or an "ultra backup"? Now imagine it was called "Duper Backup" - the same thing as with Bvckup, this quirk makes it more memorable and in the end that's what counts.
I have to put a disclaimer here though :) I have rather unconventional views of what makes or breaks the logos and names. I got flamed more than once for these views on Logopond and Typophile, but I still firmly believe that a small quirk in the name goes a long way. See, for example, http://dribbble.com/shots/92904-Puzzle
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
First two points - fully agreed. I should've mentioned the domain name availability, it is indeed the first coarse filter for rejecting name candidates. > if someone can't spell your name after hearing it, it's a fail. Practically speaking - why is it a fail? Who are the prospective users that I am going to loose over this?
Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio. Or rather, every user who doesn't because the producer can't work out how to pronounce it, so it never goes on the teleprompter.
> Every single person who hears about it on TV or radio
That's not "practically speaking". If I ever to get a TV coverage, that'd be of TWiT or similar, and I'm sure Leo can manage to pronounce it and follow-up with the URL on the screen.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#16That entire website is a tag, and I'm OK with that.
And so is HN. Are you OK with that too?
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#17This post seems to miss three important considerations: trademarks, domains & "spellability". With respect to trademarks, it's worth taking a few minutes on uspto.gov to understand the trademark landscape of your potential name. Secondly, with respect to domains, it's worth assessing how much your desired name will cost you. It is very rare to find a half-way decent name that has not been registered, but many are eit…
First two points - fully agreed. I should've mentioned the domain name availability, it is indeed the first coarse filter for rejecting name candidates. > if someone can't spell your name after hearing it, it's a fail. Practically speaking - why is it a fail? Who are the prospective users that I am going to loose over this?
>> if someone can't spell your name after hearing it, it's a fail.
>Practically speaking - why is it a fail? Who are the prospective users that I am going to loose over this?
I'd modify this slightly - I can't say it after reading it. "B-vuck up"? Sounds ugly and is not consistent with other English word forms. It's not only that it's hard for people to communicate but also it may be hard for people to internalise. How do you read it's name - I simply skip over the name, it makes reading copy with the name in it disjointed.
Now, this could work for you if your product is strong enough - if the product has a global brand behind it then I can see people going "sheesh ACME Corp's new product, have you heard the name ..." and this actually gaining you some mindshare. You'd simply pronounce it "backup" and people would know that ACME Corp spell backup with a funny A.
Other than that I personally go with this as a name fail.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#18800 uniques so far, about 50 downloads. I'll post updated counts in a bit for everyone's amusement.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#19at the risk of sounding ignorant, how the heck are people supposed to pronounce your product name? in fact, how do you even talk about your product verbally with others?
Bee-vee-cup , but here's the thing - in two years of it being in beta this has never come up as a real issue. I guess this can impede a word of (physical) mouth to a degree, but the assumption here is that few people are going to need to actually pronouce the name. Consider Dribbble, Forrst or even XKCD - having an immediately obvious phonetic form does not appear to be a firm requirement for the name as long as its…
I would've guessed that you were going for 'buckup' with a latin v (pronounced u). Akin to SVPPLY.
Re: How Bvckup got its name
#20This is off-topic, but have you considered adding a link to the actual Web site at the top of this blog? People who want to check out your product may not have the time to scroll to the bottom of the page to find the link.
Back to the topic:
Typing "bvckup.com" in the URL is troublesome, too, especially because the name itself is very counter-intuitive and difficult to type. I have to type "b", "v" and "c" with my left index finger. It's very easy to hit the wrong key, not to mention "bvc" is not in my fingers' muscle-memory for typing normal English words. Weird names like "xkcd" are weird but still easy to type. "bvckup" is just weird.