Software Development Management
“I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.” – Bjarne Stroustrup
With all the talk about mobile marketing, I though above quote might be a good way to close out the week. Have a good weekend everyone.
Photo attributed to doug88888
Anyone remember the late 90’s hype over dotcom names? Everyone was clawing their neighbors and friends to stake their claim on some dotcom property like they were ’49ers in a gold rush prospector’s fever dream. Back then it wasn’t unusual to sit down for a haircut and have the barber pitch you on his new dotcom hair-related venture that was an absolute lock to make him and his investors GDP-of-Mexico kind of money. Does that irrational exuberance ring a bell? If you didn’t get to experience that fun in the 90’s don’t worry, you can see the mini-sequel being played out in the iPhone App Store right now.
Here are the things I’ve read in the last two days that have hearkened me back to a crazier time when sock puppets pitched pet food.
All this hype is fun to watch but there are a couple things that I suspect will come if this bubble is anything like the 90’s. First I envision corporate boards around the world calling up their marketing department asking to get their logo branded on an iPhone app that does ‘something hip and cool’, never mind that its a paper company in Nova Scotia who’s clients still use rotary dial phones. Then there will be the requests by friends and family to help them with their vanity app consisting entirely of coverflow pictures of their cat (free to download, $35 bucks for the upgrade). Finally, like the 90’s, it will all end when the one billionth iPhone app is released and the only company to actually still make money is the in the business of indexing all the apps and selling ads next to the results.
Google and Microsoft announced similar app stores for their mobile operating systems, coming soon. The real question everyone is asking themselves is will important applications like iFart be cross-platform supported. One can only hope.
Photo attributed to Rachel from Cupcakes Take the Cake
Technorati tags: iphone, iphone apps, iphone applications, mobile, apple, software
There is a term we used to throw around the publishing desks back in the day. If we had a new branded product or publication we wanted to create, the first bullet point on the ToDo list was to find out if the name it was ‘Google Safe’. For us, ‘Google Safe’ meant the term or name or phrase or tagline was light on targeted search results in Google and was available for someone to make their own. I use the quotes there because, unaware at the time, Google was branding its own line of services and calling them Google Safe Browsing (who knew). The term stuck in my head since and I’m not sure what the the kids are calling it today but at least the concept is alive and well. The CEO of a web startup that will intentionally mispell an english word as their brand to find a niche in a crowded search market, that’s a woman who enjoys the path less chosen.
Good online branding is getting difficult. It has to be memorable, short, representative if possible, and it has to be somewhat available on Google. I was sitting down just today thinking of a good product name when I came up with some guidelines that at least helped.
I’m sure you can come up with better suggestions of how to pick the next great name.
Photo attributed to audreyjm529
Technorati tags: strategy, marketing, google, google safe, search engine optimization, seo, search engine marketing, sem