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Our Branding Gift to Dimdim
Our holiday gift in the "web conferencing" category goes to Dimdim, the open-source web conferencing software vendor. The gift we're giving Dimdim is the suggestion that the young company change its company and product name from "Dimdim" to something else, because Dimdim is Dumbdumb. Here's why...
Making a mark in the crowded collaboration software field to take on big web conferencing providers like WebEx with a free, open-source software product requires making everything work very well and having the brand name really sing and resonate with people. "Dimdim" doesn't sing and resonate the way, say, open source customer-relationship-management provider "Sugar CRM" sings and resonates as an alternative to SalesForce.com. The word Dimdim, which we're guessing originates in the founder's nickname ("DD") doesn't project well. Dimdim is diminutive. It feels frivolous. It connotes stupidity being so close to "dumb dumb" and isn't bright with the association to "take a dim view." If you're called "dim" you're probably not going far in life. We find it hard to imagine that the cutesy "Dimdim" is going to be associated with powering the enterprise collaboration endeavors of large companies.
Moreover, and we find this totally unacceptable, the tagline of Dimdim in the graphic of none other than the Dimdim.com homepage is "Worlds Free Web Meeting." ...That's right; there's not even an apostrophe as there should be in "World's..." We'd also add that the corrected tagline "World's Free Web Meeting" is actually unclear in the value or description of what it's attempting to signify, and it's confusing. Just what does "World's Free Web Meeting" mean?
So there it is, Dimdim! It's sorta like a baby getting a name change; no one will care in a few months. You're young, after all. We hope you're not offended by our gift in suggesting you get a new name, but we read very good reviews of your web conferencing technology and it's a shame that your brand name doesn't shine and feel smart and powerful. It's too dim. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Regifting option: If you don't like our gift idea of changing your name, we suggest passing this idea along to Yugma, a web conferencing service. We don't care that it's evidently from Sanskrit and means "to come together" and is supposed to be pronounced "yoogma." ... Yugma will naturally be read by those who don't know Sanskrit as "yug" with a short "u" and that sounds fugly.
December 18, 2006
