COMMENTS
I honestly would *love* to own Aviary.com, but it's already taken. This wasn't about us trying to be clever... just making do with what is available to us with the hope that when we do have greater resources, Aviary.com will then be in reach and we won't need to change our branding too drastically.
Now speaking of being too clever, had you just Googled "Aviary" we are actually the 1st result. :)
And now I realize I just responded snarkily to someone who gave genuinely good advice to startups picking a name (never minding the agonizing decision process on our end in choosing to go forward with a.viary.com initially).
I tend to shoot from the hip - so sorry. That was very uncool of me!
Dharmesh, I'd actually say that some startups aren't being clever enough with naming their companies. Sure, many of the best names are already taken, but a lot are not. And, many more can be had for a few dollars. For example, just yesterday I purchased Dautie.com for a website that needed a new name. An obscure word, but considering the budget for it was $100, not bad at all. I could give a long list of examples of great names that have sold recently for decent prices, Fold.com sold recently for $25,000. Yea, as Avi pointed out you can find his website by using Google. But, that doesn't prevent people from getting lost by going to Aviary.com in the first place, and one would hope that his business plan took into consideration the amount of attrition his marketing efforts will have with people giving up before they figure out where to put the '.' in his url. Next time you're having trouble thinking of a good name, call me first.
Avi: Thanks for stopping by. And you're totally right, I should have just done the simple search on "aviary" (doh!)
I still stand behind my original advice of trying to get simpler with domain names. Even for SEO (search engine optimization) reasons, this makes sense.
Now that I know your name is Avi, I can see the appeal for Aviary (as a company name).
Sorry for the snarkiness. Good luck at Under The Radar. Knock 'em dead!
Cheers,
Dharmesh
I had a similar problem when I first searched for the aviary web applications. It's ok though, I'll use Google or go directly to a.viary.com now. It would be better if they owned aviary.com but, to me, the aviary apps are interesting enough to remember the creative domain name.
Just to be clear, it's not that the quality of the tools is not worth X amount of effort. I think the Aviary tools are cool.
I'm speaking more as a startup guy and marketing guy. All things being equal, you'd prefer it to be easier to market your product than harder -- regardless of how good the product is. Sometimes a great product will overcome marketing obstacles, but I'm a simple-minded guy and would rather not have the obstacles there in the first place, when possible.
huh? type 'aviary' in google - 'a.viary.com' is the first result. how hard is that?
I wonder; if aviary had an easy name, would this post have come about? I am sure this post certainly increases the traffic to Aviary. Nice Nice! I certainly checked out their site (and am still reeling from the dropped jaw!)
Smart future planning there Avi!
You made me remember the month-long brainstorming i did with my team to choose our name :) And the result was worth it!
Our business idea is to provide an Internet portal to the city community for its day-to-day collaboration which could help reduce its everyday local commuting.
The constraints for choosing the brand were kept really strict..
- it should unambiguously convey the concept to the reader/listener/viewer, because we believe that businesses where customers are already educated (food, apparel, cosmetics etc.) can have exotic or alluding or cool names, but not us. Customer education should start with the brand itself.
- Since our ambition is to expand in 30 cities across India and cater to the urban middle class, the brand should be unambiguously recognized by non-English speakers of all Indian states (this was the toughest one!.. bcoz there are 15 popular languages in India).
- it should meet the other obvious constraints of domain names like as-short-as-possible, easy to spell etc.
We did a survey among family and friends asking them to rank their choices among 30 options.. and the result was “CITYWALA” :)
(by the way NONE of our potential competitors in the city portal domain today meet the above criteria!)