Random Thoughts on Software

The next time you are responsible for naming something, be it a software product, an organization name, a brand of clothing, or whatever, please keep this in mind: people will probably want to search for the name of your “thing” on the Web.

It is really annoying when I Google for spring factory and I don’t get anything remotely close to what I am looking for in the first two results pages. The phrase spring framework factory definitely does better, but I hate having to type framework everytime I want to search for something that has to do with Spring. I don’t have to do this with JAXB, Sony, Google, or Exxon.

Now, I can’t say that names like Windows and Apple are poorly chosen because they have been around since before Web search engines really existed and they also have tremendous mindshare. If you search for Windows online, you seem to find more results related to the Windows software platform than results related to companies that sell actual windows.

I know that this problem exists for any word that has overloaded meanings. All I’m saying is that people need to consider this as a factor when they go to choose a name. Acronymic or hard-to-spell names are annoying, but so are “overly-overloaded” names.

There is an art to picking a good name. Be an artist.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 20th, 2005 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.