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Comment by GavinMcG | Hacker News Reader

I’d imagine you might be aware, but just in case, there’s a Wireshark networking software that’s been around since 1998: https://www.wireshark.org/

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I am. I made the decision to go ahead with this name assuming most people don’t know that Wireshark. I also understood search queries would be impossible but didn’t think that would be a deal breaker.

I’m considering this feedback I have been getting but I don’t know yet if it’s biased because many people I know are in tech. Changing the name is not a huge setback for the foreseeable future until there’s brand recognition.

Thanks for the feedback.

it's fair to point out that they're different markets, but how many words do you want your potential customers to have type into Google in order to give you money?you're never going to out-seo the Ethernet capture tool Wireshark, so "Wireshark tool wire Ethernet" isn't going to be any better than trying to search for Wireshark.

but I feel you. naming things is hard, even outside of computer science. my friend has a zero knowledge password entry system and we've sat and just talked about names for hours and hours and gone back and forth.

anyway, my two cents is change the name to something that's less impossible to SEO better than. you want your users to find you and "Wireshark" just seems like a difficult name for a product to compete against, especially given all the other animals in the sea. wirefish doesn't seem particularly claimed.

This comment is probably right as much as I hate to admit it. Renaming at this stage wouldn’t be too hard - but I’ll give it serious thought ahead of the planned Kickstarter! Appreciate the feedback.

You can call your product Wireshark <Something> and then people will be able to find it by that. That way, you don't need to revise your current commitments to use the Wireshark name.

I think your reasoning is sound.

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