Robert Scoble posts a few weeks ago about the YouTube acquisition for 1.65 Billion. Astutely, he points out that Blinkx didn’t get the big deal for several reasons. One, you can’t spell it and two, you “can still say YouTube even after drinking four beers”. Under the guise of third party verification, I have independently verified that this last claim is, indeed, true (hic). It is, however, very difficult to say 10 times, fast in this state (even sober …€” go ahead, try it).

Eight years ago, our company was three months into the process of changing our name because we found that we were breaking all of our own “rules”. In December of 1999, the Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, allowing trademark holders to force the release of infringing names, was passed and Image Engineering, Inc. let loose on us its team of legal beagles (rightfully so). At the time, our company name was ImagEngineering (ACK! BLECH! Note the shared “E” in the middle) All this did was put the turbo on a re-naming that was already underway. Far and away, this was the best business decision we’ve ever made.

Here are the rules that we followed to come up with Acorn Creative. If Blinkx had follwed these rules they wouldn’t … well … they wouldn’t now be Blinkx. Use the rules in good health! If you have any ideas to add to the list, please do share!

Go Ahead, Socialize ...

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Einstein-esque. 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.