Hacker News Reader

Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

That seems like a very weird branding move to me (dropping the part of your brand name that actually makes it recognizable), but I guess I just don't understand the marketing 4D chess at play here.

Is this some kind of marketing flex? "We are so recognizable, we can afford drop the only thing from our name that makes it make object level sense"?

Other examples: Transferwise -> Wise (despite them still doing transfers as their main business), WeWork -> We (ok, to be fair in my experience not so much work got done there at the best of times) etc.

These things also usually completely kill SEO. Like, how am I supposed to google for the nearest coworking space? "we near me" sounds ridiculous to type into a search engine.

View on HN

Transferwise makes sense to me. They used to be just about transferring money abroad. By now, they offer full bank accounts including card payments. I guess they dropped the transfer to make people aware that they’re a proper bank now.

This seems more like a story people like to repeat than an actual reality, like we're just relaying wisdom from 1999.

However, chat.com is blocked on my work computer as pornography.

Do you happen to be in France?

No, the company I work for has some presence in France (and every other country) though.

> dropping the part of your brand name that actually makes it recognizable

This feels a lot like Twitter -> X, I guess we have to get used to this.

Twitter -> X is such a terrible rebrand even Elon Musk doesn't use it consistently.

I don't get why he didn't rebrand it as "twitter on X", X encompassing the chatbot, job search, group voice calls, etc and "twitter" being an "app" on X

because then the press wound still refer to it as twitter.

who calls alphabet alphabet? meta ended up slightly better only because they had three or four really strong consumer brands.

>who calls alphabet alphabet?

Not the same as Alphabet is the parent company and media do call it so when the parent company is fined for example. Same for Meta. Also, the press does write "X" or "X (formerly Twitter").

I replied to a comment suggesting X be a parent company to Twitter.

Not exactly. I was saying Twitter should be the product, X should be the platform. The current situation would be as if Google renamed Youtube to Google

I don't call alphabet anything because I don't talk about alphabet. Google is a subsidiary within alphabet.

I replied to a comment recommending Twitter be a subsidiary of X.

He jumps consistently in an X shape every time he makes a public speech though. He is pretty… important about the X.

It’s because X was supposed to become a one app to rule them all like WeChat in China, and that obviously never happened (maybe because he fired everyone?), instead X is just Elon’s personal Twitter.

It's sad but it might eventually. I would imagine to the end of Trump cadence we'll be paying with x-coin in supermarkets, both he and Elon will be making tons of money. Trumps and Elons x-coin will have tariffs built in to it and you won't be paying taxes if you use it /s

also openai is moving to a post gpt world

They didn't change anything; chatgpt.com is still the main domain. chat.com simply redirects to chatgpt.com.

Good point, although chatgpt.com used to redirect to chat.openai.com for a while too, until the former eventually became the default.

I have four different apps on my phone all called "Messenger".

There must something about companies wanting their customers think that they don't need to use the competition.

I have a similar "huh?" rxn to HBO rebranding as "Max". At first I thought someone in my family had signed up for CineMax. I still call it HBO.

There never was a digital service called HBO.

There was HBO Go and HBO Now, one of which you could subscribe to yourself, the other of which was an option you could get through your cable provider. There was massive amounts of confusion about the entire situation.

HBO Max was combining the two apps into a single digital streaming platform.

But then to drop the HBO out of "HBO Max" is certainly a decision.

Yes there was, just not in America

I guess short words are cooler and more expensive. Like Facebook starting as www.thefacebook.com and then getting facebook.com later. Not sure how meta.com is working out for them though. I guess the stock is up.

Meta is a company though, not (primarily) a brand. People don't need to google or remember "Meta"; they'll search for "WhatsApp", "Instagram" etc. (In fact, I suspect that getting as far away in semantic space from Facebook with these other properties was part of the motivation for the rename.)

If OpenAI renamed itself to just "AI" I'd sigh and shrug (and applaud the honesty), but ChatGPT is a product and well-known brand name.

FB rebranded to Meta and obfuscated that they are behind those apps, it worked, most users still have no idea that Meta is FB

This was just Justin Timberlake's idea, right.

How did you forgot x.com, the biggest flex and disaster at the same time.

I always assumed something like ChatGPT is artificially boosted by Google... do they really have people doing SEO?

Why would Google artificially boost it? They're competing. They shouldn't give it any special treatment whatsoever

Are they? Have you tried Gemini lately? They might be competing on the services side, but the only two peer competitors in the chatbot space are Anthropic and OpenAI.

They do have a chat ui. It's not as robust afaik, but I don't see why they can't expand on it. It would be a nice addition to their storage/Google one offering

Are you suggesting that chatgpt is as popular as it is because it's propped up by google in the serps?

I think they're suggesting that highly popular sites like ChatGPT get a ranking boost beyond regular page rank, making SEO efforts unnecessary.

But I don’t think that’s the case, at least not artificially. These sites tend to rise naturally in search rankings because they have a huge volume of links and media coverage. Which still makes SEO efforts unnecessary.

they are taking a common lingo (i.e. chat) and making a brand out of it. Could be a genius move.

Could be.

Me: I will ask ChatGpt… changed to “I will ask Chat”

So Mom: Who is Chat? Me: Gpt.

They could buy Chad.com as well, then it would make sense /s

They could also be banking on the emergence of "chat" as an imaginary external party to a conversation which apparently has started becoming a thing with _the youths_

- Chat, is this real?

- GPT, Being intentionally obtuse: Nah dude, chill

I still think Cortana was the best naming/branding. It's sufficiently unique, has a fun history, probably has enough syllables for voice activation, is an actual name that doesn't sound dumb to call an entity. Too bad MS squandered it.

They should probably buy skibidi.com

Good luck defending any trademark, though.

Usually brands make the conscious effort to avoid that, because they might lose their trademark.

Also Golang to Go

Golang and Go coexisted since the beginning. Go was the favorite name but Golang was used in parallel to make search possible

Every time I go to chatgpt.com I type chat into the address bar and it autocompletes to the correct site. Also when talking to my coworkers it's taken the same status as "googling" something. We just call it "chat". So yes, I also feel it's odd to see chat.com go to chatgpt but it's the shorthand some people are already using.

Examples of what my coworkers and I say at the office:

  "What does chat have to say about x?"
  "Did you ask chat"
  "Did chat find the answer?"
  "Yeah, chat scripted that one."

I’ve literally never heard anyone refer to chatgpt as “chat”. In fact, I don’t believe your anecdote.

My coworkers also watch a lot of twitch so chat was already something they said before.

It's for sure something I say...

And it's why better than someone calling it chat gip-uh-dee (pronounced with a J sound like GIF :) )

Jippity sounds dumb but it's growing on me. I wonder if that domain is still available... No, registered in 2023

I just call it "cat".

If someone talks about "chat" I assume they're talking about a livestream's chat feed, or the other members of a group message channel.

Yeah, me too. And if you squint your eyes and tilt your head you can kind of make the connection. Any large Language Model is made of the "chat" from billions of messages floating around on the internet.

So when you ask chat a question you are in reality asking an algorithmic simulation of mass internet communication.

In my mind the connection works, which is convenient with the new chat.com domain and all...

Chat is that real?

Kind of funny, because there's another product we use that's just called Chat, so we'd never say that. "GPT" is a better shorthand IMO. It's also not specific but I don't know of any other product that uses it in the branding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com