Ask HN: Our product name is Meta too. What would you do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Our product name is Meta too. What would you do?

20 pointsalanchan_tw22 comments

Our company is building projectmeta.app, a note-taking tool for visual learning, and our users call it Meta. Should we rename the company/product to avoid the name collision with Facebook?

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You picked a very generic name to beginn with. That's not an accusation but a statement. Intuitively I'd think only a very heavy organization can profit of a generic name and really make it theirs (shift the public eye to connect that word with a product/ brand). So, my action would be to take the opportunity and look for a descriptive AND more unique name for your project. Whatever you do, I wish you good luck for what comes!

Interesting project. For notes I like to stay with my rtf docs for now, but its always interesting to see other peoples approach to notes/ wiki/ ...

You might want to talk to a competent lawyer that has good knowledge of trademark law, they might be able to add some nuance based on their experience.

I would listen to your users, and think about your customer acquisition channels. Unless you rely heavily on SEO for customer acquisition, I doubt it’s going to be an issue. People are still going to call Facebook “Facebook”. Nobody calls Google “Alphabet”.

>Nobody calls Google “Alphabet”

of course not - because Alphabet is not Google

Google is a subsidiary :)

While you are technically correct, people use Google to refer to all Alphabet properties.

Ask 100 people "who owns YouTube? " - how many say Google, how many say Alphabet?

I think the parents point is that the entity legally known as Alphabet, is colloquially referred to as Google, even when not referring to the subsidiary known as Google.

If you don't change the name, I guarantee you'll get an automated cease-and-desist from Meta. All big companies have dedicated software and lawyers proactively protecting their brand.

Just change it now and move on.

What about priot art? There are a few trademarks for "Meta" already, including online services.

The actual legal merits are irrelevant. You can't win IP disputes against $900B companies, and you'd go bankrupt in the attempt.

It's cheaper to just change the name and users won't care if the product is good anyway.

My opinion: Meta wasn't a great name, even if it weren't in conflict with somebody else more famous. It's hard to Google, because so many other things are "Meta". It's vague and doesn't really tell you anything about the project.

So I'd recommend a rename, just to find something more creative and distinctive. Finding good names is hard, so I wish you luck on that, but it's worth the effort.

Yes, rename out of pragmatism: there's no point retaining the friction/confusion which would persist forever

HN will tell you you need to change name immediately and repent because facebook is too big and blablabla. It doesn't matter at all for now, in fact you might benefit from their hype. The facebook-verse will flop as it has for everyone else who tried to switch to VR, even if their quest is a good product. Their whole rebrand thing is a marketing trick to distract from everything else. Keep it until they decide send out a valid cease and desist.

Right now, without even a product named meta, how can they even send cease&desists to the many companies out there named "Meta", who already have products and registered the trademark for meta ?

This is the perfect time to get acquired.

You shouldn't to avoid collision with FB's holding company, but you should if they and a few others are successful in propagating "meta" referring to inhabited virtual spaces, as opposed to the more disassociated concept of information connection and collaboration on which your name is based.

But right now, there's really no reason they will win! A lot of negative press is going to push back hard on the new name. As others have said, Alphabet is still just Google to most people. So build your project and don't get distracted by what's currently a non-problem.

I think we should consider changing the name of the program. The current name conflicts not only with Facebook but also with the current popular concept of the metasverse.

Is your company called Meta also? If yes, then you don't have to worry about it since you incorporated before Facebook did. You will be in the right. They might intimidate you but I don't think they can legally force you to change your name. But best to ask a lawyer.

Change your name to Facebook.

Go public asap

Can’t you just be MetaNotes or something like that? Is that still too similar? Given you can prove you had the name already.

We don't call it MetaNote because note-taking is just part of the Project Meta's ecosystem. In Project Meta, we are building "Meta-apps" that add "metadata" to the original database, such that different Meta-apps can use the same data for different use cases.

Here's more context: https://medium.com/sheracaolity/my-vision-project-meta-e0bed...

Sue Facebook.

All publicity is good publicity.

my degree is in metaphysics, they should stay offa my patch I say!

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