No I don’t mean the phrase from “Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead” and no I don’t mean the title of “The Names” 2nd release. I do mean Buzzage. Buzzage is an appropriate name for our company. The age of buzz. Buzz being what you do when you call someone. Give me a buzz. Etc. We’ve put a lot of work into innovating marketing into our service, so that when people call Buzzage users, they in effect become Buzzage users too. (They call that viral marketing in the business). The key to helping something viral see the light of day, is stoking the viral fire so to speak. Arguably one way to improve your chances at something like this is to choose a name that functions on a number of levels, which in are case are:
-The name of the service should be verb-able. For example, “Skype me”, “I googled you”, etc.
-The name of the initial service should be synonymous with the company name. This way you’re investing in a single name, as opposed to multiple brand names.
-The SMS short code should be available, and thus the word can’t exceed 5 characters. This is key since we’ll have an SMS component to our service.
-The name should ideally be one or two syllables.
-A toll free phone number with the name should be available.
-Domain name should be obtainable.
-It helps to at least sound like it has something to do with what you do.
I’m sure the pros would say more, but this is the baseline for us. To that end we've decided on a new name as we near launch time. We’ve scoured dozens of names and approaches. A girl in her mid 20s that we haven’t even met before actually came up with our new name. Our PR firm and design firm helped a great deal.
Oh, what’s the name you ask? Coming soon. Real soon.
great blog. Really useful as (compared to other blogs like Google's blogs) as you give a behind the scenes look at the going ons of a start up.
Posted by: RYK | May 28, 2006 at 10:59 AM