Apple’s choice of the name Ping for its new social network is a good one – it’s short, cute, memorable, has old-school computer connotations and people say they will ping each other to mean getting in touch.
Not for the first time, though, it’s hardly original. Confusion with Ping golf putters is unlikely, but new registrations at Ping.fm which provides a social network based service have gone through the roof with people apparently confusing it with Apple’s new service. I don’t think Ping.fm will mind that too much though so the lawyers can relax – and it seems Apple has licensed the name Ping from the golf company which owns the trademark, so everyone’s happy this time.
But what’s interesting about the way Apple chooses names for its new devices or services is it decides on the right name and cares less about whether it’s already being used for a similar purpose by someone else. Ping is the most recent example but most famously the anticipated launch of the iPhone had us all thinking “Well they can’t call it the iPhone, Cisco are already using that for a cordless phone”. Well, Apple showed us, didn’t they? Then with their tablet device we thought “Don’t Fujitsu already have an iPad …. oh … ok, Apple iPad it is then.”
This pattern goes right back to the choice of their own company name, “Apple”, which pretty much from the outset landed them in a twenty year dispute with the pre-existing Apple record label. One starts to suspect Steve Jobs just enjoys these trademark battles?
I’ve been involved in several projects to name new international businesses and it’s a real challenge – it seems like any word that already exists and might be at all suitable as a business or product name is already being used somewhere in the world. And as Apple have found, a lot of the best words that don’t exist like “iPhone” are already being used too. And making up entire words to get around this is how you end up with company names like “Spherion” (sorry, guys, but that’s truly yuck).
For projects I’ve been involved in, this has meant a lot of research and finally settling on a name after about the third of fourth attempt to find one that won’t result in a “cease and desist” letter hitting our mailbox the moment we launch it.
It would be great to be Apple, and just choose the name you want then deal with the small matter of someone else already using it later. Ok they haven’t done this as clumsily as with the iPhone since that debacle, but each one of their “new” names still raises a wry smile with me.
So how about their next product name – if it’s some kind of networking device maybe they could call it the iHop? Go on, Apple, I dare ya …
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