Play Name the Platform

If you read here, you’ll know the ‘Lab’s history. If you don’t or you’re a new reader, here’s the quick skinny:

  • hello my name isIn June, we launched IdeaFactory to collect ideas inside the firewall.
  • In August, we added social networking to ideas inside the firewall and called it Connect.
  • In November, we added groups and questions to ideas and networking, rewrote it all in JRuby, called it Mix and released it to everyone.

We’ve been enhancing Mix since then, dabbling with OpenSocial-enabling the platform and planning new features. Connect hasn’t had any new features since September, and now, it’s finally time to relaunch it on the same codeline as Mix.

We’re merging onto the same platform so we can deploy new features to it easily and turn features on and off as necessary. So, Mix is an external instance of the platform. Connect is an internal version of the platform. I’ve spoken to a few teams internally who may want to launch a white-labeled version of the platform. The platform is the key, rather than its various instances, which makes it easier for us to meet the requirements of different teams.

The problem I have is explaining this to people, i.e. how Mix and Connect are different and why. Most of this goes away when they run on the same codeline, but because the platform has no name, it’s a bit difficult to articulate what it is.

Naming is hard, and frankly, I’m probably too close to the problem to have any good thoughts on names. So, in true Web 2.0 fashion, I want to crowdsource the name of the platform.

Keep in mind, this is only our pet name for the platform, i.e. there’s no official product and therefore, no official product name. I’m just collecting suggestions for what we can call the platform.

So, here are the rules: 1) Keep it clean natch, 2) Be creative, 3) Forget about Mix and Connect, since they’re already in use, I want to avoid confusion, 4) Expect only happiness and bragging rights as your reward, in other words, this game is for entertainment purposes only and no prizes will be awarded.

So, let your creative juices flow in comments.

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This entry was written by Jake and posted on 9 June 2008 at 5:29 pm and filed under general. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

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