Ask HN: Why do the names of so many products give no information on what it is?
Dropbox makes me think of storage. iPhone is straight to the point as well as Evernote. Of every application you know with a large user base can you tell what the product does by it's name?
So why does it seem that so many companies give up such a valuable piece information into what their product does for a shorter domain name? To sound unique? If there is no connection between the name and the product how likely am I to remember the name when I try to talk about it? It might be worth pointing out that this is not a recent development. For example, take the names of text editors: - Obvious: Word, Notes, Writer, ed, Notepad etc. - Less obvious: vi, vim, Emacs, nano/pico Or car brands: - ‘Obvious’: General Motors, BMW, Volkswagen - Less Obvious: Mercedes, Ford, Audi So this is definitely not a recent phenomenon and I hence doubt that you could link it to the length of domain names. When it comes to retail, I have a self-rule about never buying from any retailer whose name makes it obvious what they sell. "amazon", "ebay", "Tesco" don't make it obvious. "PC world", "Phones4u", "Lawyers4u", "buycheapstuffonline" make it obvious. I think a unique name helps build a brand over a descriptive name which to me often sounds cheap. I don't know for certain, but I get the sense that "intellectual property" concerns play into naming pretty heavily these days. That is, folks don't want to hassle with trademark dust-ups, so they use semi-random nonsense names to avoid even appearing to infringe. Twitter? Facebook? those aren't so obvious to me.