Google me, Tweet me, Facebook me: The Action of Tech Platforms
‘Facebook me,’ ‘tweet it,’ ‘Shazam that;’ in the world of tech, your name is not just a service or brand, it is your verb. The stakes have been raised. The goal is not only to create a brand but rather the hope of becoming everyday jargon referring to the action in which you provide. In the world of social, sharing, and online apps, becoming a verb may be the difference between life and death of a company.
About a month back I sat down with Scribd’s CEO, Trip Adler for a casual lunch to catch up. We had met several months earlier in Maui during a kiteboarding trip at a very exciting time for the company. They were receiving 90 million unique monthly visitors and becoming a household name in tech start-up. Scribd’s document uploading and sharing platform is making us all self-publishers and adding information to the Internet at a vast and expedited level. Today, several months later from our first meeting in Maui, Trip was ready to raise the stakes with their mobile app of Scribd, called Float.
‘Float? Let me get this straight, you have a service recognized by millions and you are going to change the name?’ I held back the gulp of ice tea I had just taken in risk of spraying it out with my shocked reaction. I couldn’t possibly fathom the strategy behind this. Why would you change the name of a product people know and associate with? Isn’t the end goal users?
“Scribd is not as good of verb as ‘Float’,” Trip responded starkly.
Turns out Trip’s strategy was a hot topic among Silicon Valley start-ups as the terms ‘Google me,’ ‘Facebook me,’ ‘Tweet it’ are regular cocktail party verbose, no longer just at Stanford. For me, in college, ‘Facebook me’ was conjugated in our lexicons as frequently as ‘to study.’ This made me think that Trip makes a valid point with the marketing strategy behind ‘verb names.’ The question is, will a name that is easily made a verb make or break your product? I would hope to think not.
Take the story of Microsoft’s search engine ‘Bing.’ Like Google, the name is simple, catchy, translates globally well, and is really just a great ‘name verb.’ Microsoft hired Interbrand to come up with the name and spent an estimated $80 to $100 million USD according to Ad Age on the launch campaign. They also paid Verizon $550 million USD to use the search engine as the default on all their Blackberry devices. Do we use the name Bing as a regular verb at social gatherings, cook outs, birthdays, dinner parties? As an optimist, I would say not…yet.
According to CNET’s Lance Whitney, Bing has increased their market share by 75% up to 17% from 9.7%. This is a large number if you consider the users. That being said, it would be hard to argue the name was the main variable behind Bing’s crawl to catch up. A variable it may be, but one we have yet to measure accurately or even understand its ROI.
Both Bing and Scribd feel a strong name that transitions well to a verb is a risk hopefully worth the reward. It is indeed a strong marketing chance, or in other words: a systematic strategy. In the case of Scribd, will Scribd’s Float become a household verb if the product is successful? Or would we have said ‘Scribd it?’ Silicon Valley seems to think Float was a wise choice, but putting a value on creating a verb, that is a whole other can of worms.
