Namethis roadmap
by matt - June 25th, 2008
We’ve received some great feedback from yinz about how you’d like to see namethis improve, and I wanted to kinda summarize those ideas and give you some insight into what we’re thinking. I also want to make clear that we’re reading, listening, and always trying to find the best ways to improve the site.
The biggest issue from both your and our prospective has been the number of name suggestions. For a user, a huge page is hard to manage. It also spreads watts too far around and makes it exceedingly difficult to successfully invest. Furthermore, there’s a problem when the ratio of suggested names to investments is unbalanced. The best input into our decision algorithm is investment and the huge number of names vs. less investing (beget from an unwieldy page, too few watts in the community, and a trepidation toward losing watts) skews the results. Various ideas to help solve this issue have been proposed at Kluster headquarters and on the blog including:
- Limiting the names a person can suggest
- Making the namer “pay” watts to suggest names
- Creating multiple competitions to pick (for instance) a top 25 before choosing the top 3
- Changing the payout percentages to give more money to investors and less to the namer
- Capping the total number of suggested names
- Eliminating names which don’t receive any investment or only a small investment after a certain period
- Simply a better explanation of investment
- A two-column layout to prevent the page from getting too long
- Limiting the time during which names can be suggested to allow for an invest-only period before selection.
There’s lots of different approaches to fixing this problem and they’re by no means mutually exclusive. We want the site to remain fun, we want to pick the best names for our client, and we want the market/competition aspect of investing and brainstorming to be balanced. We also have to keep in mind that the utility for the client is a limited time span after which they’ll have an answer, that brainstorming is a collaborative enterprise where good ideas build off of each other, and that it’s no fun to be prevented from participating. Any solution we find has to fit into the very simple interface that we currently have.
Are there better ideas out there that haven’t been listed above? Is there a strong community preference to any of the above suggestions?
As always, thanks for being a part of this experiment and business. We hope it’s as much fun for you as it is for us.
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Bad for the customer: Capping the total number of suggested names — just because 50 names has been suggested, why stop the customer from getting the 51st name that’s just right for them.
Bad for the investor: Making the namer “pay” watts to suggest names — if they hit zero, no way out
A lot of these “limits” on things can just be subjected by people having multiple accounts, so I’m not in favor of them.
As a result:
Preference: Eliminating names which don’t receive any investment or only a small investment after a certain period — Get rid of the trash entries means people can easily see the best entires there and influence the winner. Perhaps it takes so many people investing every two-six hours for an investment to stay “alive”?
Despite reading my post a thousand times before posting it … *sigh* … I forgot one variation.
Rate limiting new names so a namer can suggest only so many names an hour, per half day, per day, etc.
@aubrey good looking out on the multiple accounts thing. definitely something to keep in mind.
You make good points about name capping and so on.
There are drawbacks to eliminating names without sufficient investment. What if people aren’t investing in the ‘good’ names (subjective, obviously)? Not enough people are investing at the moment for that to be an effective way of weeding out the dross. Good stuff will fall by the wayside and the client will lose out again.
I think that the 2 columns are a great inprovement in order to not make it too long, you can’t limit the names per person, i guess that an investment only time could be good for the community, you guys should also check repeated names beacuse there’s been some name pasting, which is just words pasted together.
“Creating multiple competitions to pick (for instance) a top 25 before choosing the top 3″
This allows a better chance of winning for the user and would give the client a better outlook of what’s going to happen if they want to steer people away from a choice.
and
“Eliminating names which don’t receive any investment or only a small investment after a certain period”
A lot of the names suggested directly violate the terms set down by the client. These should be removed as well as names already in use (I’ve seen a lot of myspace, facebook, etc).
You’re definitely headed in the right direction imo.
“A two-column layout to prevent the page from getting too long”
or just smaller margins/padding and smaller text size.
What about a voting system? You see 4 names for a category and you pick the best out of the 4 to give a 2 watt investment. This would encourage more participation without heavy investments.
-Mike
Thanks for the attention you’re giving to our suggestions, and the chance to weigh in again.
I use two “brains” on NameThis: One to come up with ideas and one to evaluate names. While there is some overlap (I blow through what’s already up sometimes to be sure I’m not treading on concepts that have already been sucked dry), I find that I’m actually more objective about names when I’m in the “invest” mode. And, frankly, I miss a lot of good ones in my rush to see if my “hot” idea has already been posted.
Furthermore, I get distinctly different pleasure from the two tasks. Coming up with a name I like is a real rush, independent of whether or not the name wins. And the whole brainstorming exercise is fun; it’s fascinating to watch ideas morph from good to better or good to bad or good to best. Then, in the evaluative phase, it’s entertaining to see what other people have come up with — especially if it’s somewhere my particular brain wouldn’t have gone — and I get a kick out of seeing and investing in good names. But that’s something I haven’t done much of lately because I just don’t have time to wade through so many when I’m busy trying to come up with names of my own.
So “two phases” gets my vote.
Phase II would have to be well thought-out, though. Investing in someone else’s idea when you invest in your own is an interesting concept, but there is (as someone pointed out) no way to prevent people from voting for ideas that they think don’t have a chance in order to ensure the primacy of their own. I’d tend to favor a cap on the number of watts you can invest in your own idea (especially as you already have the lion’s share of it!). And, nice as those $40 wins are, I have to admit we might get more good names with a $25 first prize and the other $15 divvied up between the winning voters.
I’d like to make another plea for blind submissions. I know there are contributor names I tend to look for (you know who you are!) because of excellent past entries. In the real world, the market value of a name isn’t tied to the reputation of its creator; nor should it be here.
And I’d still like to see a “top 25″ list at the end — and maybe a token 10-watt prize. You could even mix ‘em up so Mr. or Ms. #4 wouldn’t get too frustrated. Top 10 & Next 10 would be enough to give people hope that they were close and might have a chance on the next round. I do think there’s a value in the helping us along the learning curve.
P.S. <>
I bet this would get a lot more watts in play: If you knew your investment had an actual chance of panning out (1 chance in 25, aided and abetted by your own gut), you’d be more likely to take the risk. These additional watts would help compensate #1 winners who might be getting less than $40.
P.P.S. did not come through: It was multiple competitions for picking.
I wouldn’t mind seeing a “bad feedback” or “strike” option next to the investment option.
Explanation:
Because it is so easy to submit names many people allow their names to evolve as they are submitted. I do this often. I will start out with a name, and then it will gradually evolve into something better (or worse). Some of the “brainstorm” or pre-final idea names are complete garbage. I think allowing users to “strike” and delete the worse names would be great. Say after 5 strikes by users the names is deleted.
This system could be abused, if people don’t like each other. This system could also get rid of a name that the company paying for it would have liked. But, this is only a suggestion anyway, you are welcome to strike it as you wish.
Two Hybrid Solutions:
1. Each user can submit one name for free, if they want to submit more than one they have to pay X watts.
I think this sort of system will improve name suggestions overall and benefit everyone. Namers will have to spend some time and think about the BEST name they want to submit (for free) so the quality of names will improve and forcing users to pay for the second name suggestion and beyond will reduce the “throw spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” method of naming…reducing the clutter, etc.
2. Allow the customer to remove names and place them in a “rejected” pile.
If the customer is proactive the namers will be able to improve their suggestions as the 48 hours progresses because they can see the names the customer doesn’t like. I realize this goes somewhat against the whole idea behind the algorithm, but I think the only way you should allow removal of names is by the customer, otherwise you may end up removing a name they like.
So the winner is “Slender.com… it’s available”?
Maybe the site could have some automated fact checking. It would be easy to add a .com to a suggested name and check WHOIS, if indeed a customer wants the domain.
I wrote an app that did that years ago, using the dictionary, and prefixing “i” or “e”, as well as checking “AAAA.com” through “ZZZZ.com” and I got some great dot coms out of it. And you should also automatically link to http://www.USPTO.gov to check trademarks, otherwise this is a waste of effort. For example, if I say a store that sells Apples, I’ll end up with Apple.com. Real useful.
Here’s the scoop on Slender.com
Domain name: SLENDER.COM
Administrative Contact:
Reflex Publishing Inc.
Internet Admin (not for sale) (admin@reflex.com)
+1.8133544500
Fax: +1.8133544500
1971 W. Lumsden Rd. #110
Brandon, FL 33511
US
Technical Contact:
Reflex Publishing Inc.
Internet Admin (not for sale) (admin@reflex.com)
+1.8133544500
Fax: +1.8133544500
1971 W. Lumsden Rd. #110
Brandon, FL 33511
US
Registrant Contact:
Reflex Publishing Inc.
Internet Admin (not for sale)
1971 W. Lumsden Rd. #110
Brandon, FL 33511
US
Status: Locked
Name Servers:
dns1.name-services.com
dns2.name-services.com
dns3.name-services.com
dns4.name-services.com
dns5.name-services.com
Creation date: 21 May 1997 04:00:00
Expiration date: 22 May 2009 04:00:00
I’m glad that you guys are looking into the issues. I like your ideas, though I agree with Jason instead of people “paying” for suggesting names, perhaps there should be an additional charge only for additional names suggested. This way there has to be a lot of thought in order to suggest names, because I have seen a lot of names that were not what the client wanted(didn’t fit the criteria). I also like the idea of investment only hours, this would cut down on the many names that are suggested, and also gives names that have been there for almost the entire time a chance to not be lost in the crowd. I also like the idea of multiple competitions, I think that this would help people feel as though their watts will count for something, and allow for more people participating on the site.
@Russel, I think we can have somewhat of a karma on the names like you said
@Tiffany, You are right that we only pay additional watts for every 1 name we exceed of our allotted number of names, like 3 names per hour (This also increases traffic to the site = more ad revenue) any succeeding name incurs a 100 watt cost.
I also like multiple steps in determining a winner.
Finally, maybe when someone enters a name, the algorithm/matrix searches in the suggested names if it was repeated. And if the client may put some algorithm based rules, that prevent useless name suggestions. And maybe the algorithm will also have a database of known brands/names to counter check with. And if the suggestion is like only 1 letter different from another entry, the will be a message “There is this *insert name* already posted..would you like to continue ?” or something like that
Or, instead of allowing users to reject names, just allow the Administrator of the project to reject the names that they don’t like.
> There are drawbacks to eliminating names without sufficient investment
Then keep the necessary investment low. It needs at least 10 points an hour and nothing will be removed if it’s been up for under 6 hours. If that ends up being too harsh, then try 5 points. At that point it is just balancing.
> A lot of the names suggested directly violate the terms set down by the client.
Give people the ability to moderate suggestions. “Off-Topic”, “Dupe”, “Does Not Meet Spec”, “Domain Not Available”.
> “top 25″ list at the end
Good idea. It might keep people suggesting if they knew they were close.
> Allow the customer to remove names and place them in a “rejected” pile.
Could the customer then game things by removing all entries except ones he suggests, winning on a seperate account, therefore listing at a discount? He could still decide what name he liked best.
From the namethis projects thus far, I think the terms by the client are usually:
1. The domain must be available
2. Certain words are taboo
As such, it would be a good idea to have a program to check the winning entries against the terms specified by the client. If one of the 3 winners violate the terms, then it should be excluded and the next most popular name should be selected for inclusion. Would it be possible to include this into the algorithm used to select the winners?
@wilson love the excluded word idea. simple and will work well.
Not that my opinion should matter but I’m NOT in favor of eliminating names with no investments. While the idea of Namethis is to produce market-validated names, the paying customers aren’t obligated to pick any of the winning names. It is conceivable that customers may eventually go with a name that did NOT win but somehow struck a chord with them. If I were the paying customer, I would want to see ALL the suggestions – good or bad.
Anyway – my point is censorship anywhere especially a “creative environment” is going to backfire.
Another suggestion while I’m at it. Can we please tone down the bright colors on namethis pages? For someone like me who pretends to be working but actually Naming This, it draws unwanted attention from the people walking by my cube
@matt — excluding words via computer might backfire. For instance, if someone’s naming an online dictionary and doesn’t want “internet” or “web” in the name, someone playing with Daniel Webster’s name wouldn’t be able to post (even if there were no intention to use “web” in the internet sense).
Also (and this is secondary) I do see some advantage to the client for having ALL names available to him/her. One of the most useful things about crowd-sourcing is that it can help steer the client. With Honeyshed, for instance, the crowd DID go with (unwanted) bees in the tag line, which speaks to the issue of what the word “Honeyshed” means to Joe (and Josephina) Schmo.
After these last few rounds, I have lost all faith in the “algorithm.” While I am a newcomer to the klusterfuck world of namethis, I have figured out how to win (albeit a tad unethically) more or less every round. The first two times my names placed, the victories were honest - I didn’t even invest in my first win. Yet after seeing how much people were winning by attaching the suffix “ster” to the first word most obviously relevant to each project and then investing some of their own watts - how could I resist? I had a 97% stake in “quotester,” a name that, quite frankly, sucks. This algorithm needs serious rethinking if it intends to reward those with clever names rather than those who know how to exploit its shortcomings.
@tyler don’t despair … even if you’ve lost faith in the current algo version (i want to be clear i’m not endorsing your opinion), we’re constantly working on improving it and the site to gather better data upon which to make decisions. we’re looking into this issue right now.
Matt, something’s up. I just invested 7 watts in someone’s idea and the system decided I meant to invest 42. Which I didn’t. ??? Thanks.
Whoa! Now my 12-watt investment is mysteriously up to 63. (I did try to invest in something else, but that never went through.)
How about a filter? Lets say I want to be able to see all entries who have a certain keyword in them before I end up voting on something. This might really clean things up.
When checking for dupe entries, remove common words like “the”, etc.
Too often there are entries like “The Thing” and “Thing”, often posted by the same paranoid person. Less dupes = less trash entries = better chance on seeing and voting on something meaningful.
It also means “The Thing” and “Thing” don’t end up splitting votes between them.
> For instance, if someone’s naming an online dictionary and doesn’t want “internet” or “web” in the name, someone playing with Daniel Webster’s name wouldn’t be able to post (even if there were no intention to use “web” in the internet sense).
It’s still the paying customers wishes…
@aubrey maybe “the thing” is a better name. it’s a slippery slope. i would like to get rid of dupes as much as possible, but sometimes a very small variation is actually a better name. say what you want about “el-goog” as the winner, but i think there’s a clear difference between “el-goog” and “elgoog” that mean they shouldn’t be considered dupes. and that’s only one character, not even an extra word.
> It is conceivable that customers may eventually go with a name that did NOT win but somehow struck a chord with them. If I were the paying customer, I would want to see ALL the suggestions – good or bad.
So, give them to the customer. There is no need to make it take 20-25 minutes to go through a list and evaluate 400-500 entries for each person that visits. It’s a big waste of time, and after reading 200 dumb, invalid entries you might not be able to invest the time to evaluate these.
Fudd’s first law of creativity is “To get a good idea, get lots of ideas then take the bad ones away.” Kluster does this wonderfully. However, you could do this hourly instead of one time at the end. Every hour disqualify some. Make sure all entries get at least “15 minutes of fame” and that the list of entries never gets shorter then a manageable list to chose from.
In the end, send the customer all the names. You just don’t need to waste so much time with an idea that already, after a decent amount of time, just a total failure. All it ends up doing is make people doubt that the suggestions are any good. Look back historically at comments here. There is a great amount of people who see Kluster as a great way to get a long list of bad names. Maybe they don’t spend that 25 minutes to see the gems in the rubble.
@Matt — would you consider the “thread” idea again, so that Mr. elgoog at least gets something for “sparking” Mr. el-goog? (Being left in the dirt is why we see all those “variant” posts that, as Aubrey said, can split votes.)
@stacy how exactly would one enforce thread usage? what’s to stop the namer from just posting the name as a new “top level thread” even if it was inspired? plus, i have a lot of reservations in regard to complicating the ui with threads.
[...] enforce the rules of the namethisee. Inspiration for this feature came directly from Wilson Lin, on this blog. Thanks [...]
@matt, with you on the complication thing completely. Design would be crucial. As to the usage issue, bear with me while I throw some stuff at you. Formalizing rules would help: State clearly that it’s totally cool to jump on someone else’s idea and tweak it, as long as you do so on the appropriate thread. Further, be sure everyone who helped in the lead-up to the big three is rewarded with some combination of watts and cash. I would think the algorithm could be made to recognize the linear pattern that led to the winner. To prevent people from gaming this system, the algorithm could be coded to note similarities (a string of letters minus spaces and punctuation/caps, perhaps) that would trigger a rule reminder: “You are proposing a name that is very similar to one that has already been suggested,” and then show a button that would bring you to name that name. You could also customize the algo at the start of each contest by telling it to ignore certain words (remember on the old “Wheel of Fortune” how s-t-r-l-n and e were free?). So for the Medicare tag line, the use of “med,” “medi,” “care,” and “insurance” would not prompt a reminder to start a new thread.
Here’s another idea. Instead of using threads, give people another box under “explanation” to credit names that have inspired them. Make it optional. That way, if I rush to my computer having thought up “IDEA1″ on my own, I ignore it. But if I just saw Helen’s “IDEA,” I can credit her — and if I win, the algorithm can reward her somehow. Over time, people who continually feed off the genius of others will be embarrassed into crediting their colleagues, especially if you add the “flagging” component discussed by previous bloggers. Transparency seems to work: Since some of the issues have been raised on this blog, a fair amount of self-policing has been going on. Bringing problems out into the open as they occur does actually appear to encourage more gentlemanly and gentlewomanly behavior. I’ve also noticed a tendency to reward “fair players” with attention (and watts) more than those who treat namethis as their own personal playpen.
I know the thread idea may cause more problems (especially for hitch?!) than it would solve. Other ideas that would really help would be to present names in the order they were proposed, rather than all mixed up, or to present them alphabetically and date-stamped.
Just trying to think a little outside the box. I still think the key to coming up with the best names is balancing the competitive and the collaborative. The dog-eat-dog approach to everything is not (as we’re learning) sustainable.
@Aubrey – I see your pain in having to wade through all the entries. NameThis is still relatively a small site in terms of traffic. Imagine when the membership grows to thousands and people start cranking out thousands of entries in a matter of seconds. So, lets all agree that it is not viable to ask people go through all the names.
I also stick to my guns that the customer should still have access to all the suggested entries unless they explicitly strike down the names themselves (this could be another feature along with “excluded words” feature for the paying customers so they can just log in and just knock off the suggestions they don’t like.
Also instead of just one long list – can we have a layout that displays Top 50 (based on investment or date stamp) then Next 50 & Display All buttons?
I support the Stacy’s datestamping suggestion. Right now I don’t know who suggested first when two names are similar. I want to be able to invest in the more original idea….
@matt and stacy
The thread idea is problematic for the reasons that matt has stated. However I think there is a lot to be said for originality. One thing I find is that I will enter a name, for example HeadHunch. Well I realize that I could enter HeadHunch, Head Hunch or Head-Hunch with very little variation in meaning (head-hunch caters to url, headhunch looks better). I could enter all 3, but I risk my idea losing, because investments get distributed across the three names rather than in one name, or I could risk someone stealing my idea and taking the credit (and the $$$).
But there is an easy solutions: Allow me to add two protected variants to my name. These two variants would be protected from copying and available to the client (also displayed to the community).
I doubt this would be abused (by entering unrelated names) because there is a better chance of winning if you enter those names, rather than enter them as variants.
@Gabriel — I like that idea! But I still think date/time-stamping would be of use, too; there’s always a fourth (and fifth) variant. And an alphabetical listing would make it easier to compare (and check timing of) similar entries.
@ Matt — I’m seeing the light on the thread thing. But I’m still hoping you all are considering 1) separate generation and voting phases, and 2) increasing the incentive for people to invest in names other than their own. Often a 100-watt investment will yield a 25-watt or less reward, and a few cents, even for a first-place win. At this point the only real reason to invest in someone else’s names is that it’s fun.
I found out about NameThis.com through a small article in the German Daily Paper “Welt Kompakt” a few days ago. I wish NameThis every success..A link providing a short clear summary on how the whole voting and investing system works would be very helpful . I also endorse the Paypal idea .
1. I run my own filter of the names by just doing a Control F and typing in the phrase I want. If it doesn’t show up on the page. I use it. I also run the variants through the Control F search. If you have a first in time rule, even if I copy someone elses name I would not get credit b/c I’m not first in time.
2. I don’t like this new limit on when you can submit names. It’s not clear how long you have to wait between submissions. Also, I didn’t even know about the rule until now when I happened upon the Dashboard. Such a rule change should be emailed to everyone. :0)
I take it back — self-policing is clearly not a viable option.
Someone posted a really cool name for the medical site: Vitruvia (sounds like “vital” and “vie” — French for health, and “trouver,” French for find), which is also cleverly linked to the client’s logo. It’s perfect. In a properly supported namethis world, it would find itself the recipient of many votes. Instead, the number of riffs on the name, with people simply adding “medical” or “health,” or some variation thereof is not only going to split votes, it may well leave the originator (who I believe has also posted variants in self-protection) out in the cold.
It’s time to decrease the winning $ amount. That big $40 prize is just too tempting (and the rewards for supporting — rather than ripping off — a good name too small) to encourage meaningful voting or, for that matter, fair play.
We can argue ’til the cows come home about whether Vitruvian or Vitruvias are better than Vitruvia, but the simple fact is that none of these names would even be in play if they hadn’ t been suggested by one smart namethiser. Surely the client is capable of adding his or her own “n” or “s” to a submission. In the meantime, people are so frantic trying to come up with the one-letter difference that will snatch the $40 that they aren’t even being creative anymore.
@Stacy - Great point. I’m always torn when I submit a name. If I submit every possible variation of my own name idea, I feel like I’m diluting my suggestion and my chances at winning. On the other hand, if I don’t do it, someone else is sure to.
To follow up with Stacy’s earlier comments - I guess I need to make sure I submit every possibly variation of any name I submit. When I got the medical site klusterbot email, I was certain I was a winner, but I was wrong. While I had submitted both Vitality and Vitality Healthcare Associates, it was actually Vitality Healthcare that won. I’m not complaining, I think Vitality Healthcare is good, but I agree with Stacy that there should be some way to tweak this so that each name one of us thinks up doesn’t require 10 different submissions to cover every possible variation. Not sure what the answer is, but agree that there is an issue to deal with.
One more thing - would love to see a date/time stamp on the name suggestions. For example, I see WiSpy and WiSpi for the surveillance system. I think the name concept is good, but since they are so close, I would rather vote for the one who came up with it first.
Kristen - I could not agree more seeing as how I came up with the WiSpy first before some hack came up with WiSpi…
@kristen I second the date/time stamp idea. It would be nice to be able to see which of 2 or more very similar name suggestions came first and then be able to reward the person who first came up with the idea. Perhaps the time stamp can replace the suggester name? I don’t really see how knowing the suggester would help someone invest watts in the better name - the suggester’s name can be shown after the project has closed to acknowledge those who had participated.
@Russell - thanks for the info. Now I know where to put my watts.
@Wilson - I agree - although, ironically, I tended to steer away from the names suggested by users who (before naming limits) flooded each project with 100 names. I think the anonymity of removing the suggester name would help, especially as everyone in the namethis community get to know each other more.
@Kristen and Wilson.
I see the idea here.
I would like to keep names as they tell me who not to invest in. Some people just do not come up with good ones ever it seems like…
However, I guess I would not mind having the names of the person removed as it would allow me to be a bit more open minded…
Hi, just a few thoughts:
How about publishing stats for each members suggestions with the key stats being:
Average amount (per member) invested in their suggestions (this way you would be able to spot those members who are heavily supported by a few people e.g. friends, family ot multiple accounts.
Average number of users investing in suggestions (similar to above e.g. you would be able to work out if they get 10 members investing 1000 watts or 1000 members investing 10 watts)
Most Supported/Most Supported By lists - with percentage of total watts invested - this way you could see if B and C are investing 95% of their watts in A’s suggestions.
By releasing this information (which Kluster already possess) you would allow the crowd to deal with ‘gamers’ how they see fit i.e. by choosing not to invest. And it would require no change to the current suggesting/investing method.
Also, I’ve recently discovered first hand the ‘variations’ problem. I suggested FullCircle for the direct marketing agency program project. NB: it seemed that I was the first person to suggest any names for this project. When I log back in about 40ish hours later I discover Full Circle has also been suggested. This may be innocent - it is perfectly possible that we both suggested the names at roughly the same time (esp. as it’s not exactly the most original suggestion) - however if it is not then this kind of variation could destabilise the Namethis concept. If FullCircle (or Full Circle) was, in theory, the most popular name on the list then there is a strong chance that it won’t win once there are 1 or more very close variations as the amount of watts invested will be split.
A possible solution to this is to allow the original suggester to name a few variations (which would be listed in the same box as the main/original suggestion) according to a very brief style guide. So, for example, you could be allowed to add or remove a space/hyphen/capital letter or maybe even to add/remove the words a, and, be, the etc. Anything that is not listed as a variation is then fair game for other members. If it is listed then it is protected.
The only problem I can see with this is that if the suggestion wins then the customer would then be faced with 6 or 7 variations of the same name but not know which is the most popular. Maybe a solution would be to allow the default setting be for investing in the original name but if an investor wishes they can invest in one of the variations. All of the watts would be counted for all of the variations when deciding which are the winning 3 suggestions but then the most popular variation would become the actual winner.
If that makes sense.
Also,
Why not let the company/customer choose from 3 versions of namethis:
1. Suggest & Invest — the current model
2. Suggest only - the comapny then picks the best 3 and the cash doled out accordingly
3. Suggest then Invest - so once the names have been suggested the employer can then cut down the list and put it up for investment. They could then either take their own top 3/10/25 etc. and put it up for investment. Take out the rubbish, duplications etc. Or a combination. Or whatever they want.
This way the customer would have more control and they could confront the problems of duplication, large lists etc.
@ben Releasing the information about the amount of watts invested and the investers would not be of much help. You can’t really tell with 100% certainty if someone is gaming the system or not based on that information. Even if someone is really gaming the system, the impact of the crowd not investing in the idea could be minimal since the gamer could have enough watts to influence the system without the need for other people to invest in their name.
The focus here should be to make things harder for gamers, by not revealing details of the algorithm used to choose winning entrants. I like the idea of the 3 variants, particularly the one where the company chooses the winning entries. That would really make the system fair and would make it impossible for gamers. It also allows companies to select the option that best suits their purposes. Perhaps the system could use the invested watts to identify the top 50 names and submit them to the company for their decision? I recall a post earlier where something like this was suggested.
I wonder… would it be possible for namethis to expand its scope from just names and slogans, for example venture into logo designs? It would require allowing people to upload picture files as submissions, but it would certainly be a new area of growth
@Wilson Lin
Try shareyourbrain.com - They do this already. In fact, they do the same thing that Kluster does, only better and cheaper.
@Eric
shareyourbrain.com may do what namethis.com does, but it certainly does not do what Kluster Labs has done and is still working to do– create an entire product, as was done at TED.
brainstorming is not new, manifesting a consumer driven product within the span of a few days is. Other sites can only hope to emulate.
@Eric
Also, Kluster doesn’t require you to sign up to a monthly charge if you want to cash out on your efforts!
I probably shouldn’t help you out for free, but…
what is to stop me ( a theoretical competitor to your paying customers ) from STEALING the best name and registering the DNS right quick.
That, to me, is a huge flaw in your system. You are openly publishing the winning names, and allowing them to be stolen. You’d never be able to prove that I, the competitor, found this name first, so unless you have copyright and trademark stuff built-in, you’ve just screwed your customer. Now I’m holding their domain for ransom and they have to be me for the right to use it. hell, I’ll just steal their whole business while i’m at it.
Hmm. I mentioned this in an email I wrote to team@kluster.com, but a simple time stamp on the surface of a submission (like 99Designs’ system) could ease this problem by showing precisely when a person submitted an idea. Kluster likely already has this info in their database (exact time name suggestions were submitted) so it IS theoretically possible to “prove” who had an idea first. Also, WHOIS keeps record down to the second of when domain names are registered. . . along with the names, address and phone numbers of those people registering domains, so it’s not like you’re really “getting away” with anything. . . more like everyone can see exactly who you are and what you did if you’re a domain poacher.
Besides, the alternative to an “open” system like namethis would be a closed system, which by nature tends to propagate lameness and paranoia. Creativity doesn’t tend to flourish amid lameness and paranoia. As for “[stealing] their whole business” . . . um, I think that’s called having competition and is also dependent upon a fairly important factor called “implementation”.
@Eric. Get off my blog. You spam our tech crunch posts with your shitty website links, and you bring it on my home turf too… My community is smarter than yours will ever be. Get lost– Or stay here and deal with the wrath of klusterers. They’re a nasty bunch if you piss them off.
Sorry, i’m not one to hold back words. Get back to work.
@shawnee: agreed, but i could still poach, right? and i do get a business abstract and a name to start poaching with. given that domain names go from $8.00 to $600 once poached, that’s a big deal. add in the abstract and now i’m really hurting them.
also, it doesn’t matter who comes up with an idea first — time to market, time to copyright, time to trademark — those things matter. timestamps in a database do nothing because namethis is not a certifying authority.
really, i want to see you guys succeed. like i said, i could have kept quiet, and i have nothing to gain. so no hard feelings! but if i had an idea that i wanted to put money into (and i have several!), i couldn’t do it on such an open platform.
definitely, it’s a great site!