Crowdsourcing company + domain name?

April 7, 2013 6:26 PM

Shoudl I use a crowdsourcing site for my company's name and domain?

I need to change my company's name and domain. I'd like to do it in as short a time as possible. I have funds, but not enough for a real naming company.
I'm looking into one of many crowdsourcing sites that specialize in names / domains. What's your experience with this? Especially interested in success or horror stories.

posted by signal to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Seems like a bad idea. If you get big, you are going to end up with a Facebook type situation where someone makes a claim based on the fact that they gave you the name a long time ago.
posted by gjc at 7:45 PM on April 7, 2013

I'd have thought that the biggest potential error would be selecting a name that infringes on a potential competitor's trademarks in your locality or elsewhere in the world. Which it seems to make more sense to spend money on a lawyer for because crowdsourcing couldn't really be trusted for verifying that. If you want horror stories looking for trademark lawsuits will probably find you some.

(One other note though: IANAL but from a layman's reading about trademark law I don't think you have any claim on a name just because you thought it up, if you aren't doing business with it and using it to identify yourself within a particular industry - and two companies can use the same name within different industries even on a global scale, Apple Computer and Apple Records being the classic example - and something as short as a name can't be copyrighted.)
posted by XMLicious at 8:50 PM on April 7, 2013

Best answer: These services work just fine. I have also paid one person to come up with names for a company and they did an even better job, but if you don't know a good person for that already, the crowdsourcing sites will probably help you out.
posted by michaelh at 10:33 PM on April 7, 2013

Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. Note that OP is especially looking for first-hand experience; general talk about naming, or asking what a name company is doesn't answer the question.
posted by taz (staff) at 4:07 AM on April 8, 2013

Best answer: It's a fine idea. If you read the contract for naming and branding at a place like Crowd Spring or whatever, it covers gjc's concerns (or at least does so to my personal satisfaction; I am not a lawyer, and MeFi will pretty much always tell you to get a lawyer.) You would need to do your own due diligence on whatever you select.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:03 AM on April 8, 2013

Response by poster: Ended up using namestation.com. Got about 100 entries, no good ones.
posted by signal at 12:14 PM on May 8, 2013