How-to Rebrand A social network And you may Real time To tell On the They

Anybody do capture its pitchforks, sign up a good posse, and you can burn the web down

Editor’s Notice: Visitor factor Catherine Prepare is the Vice-president, Brand Means from MeetMe, Inc., a social media to possess conference new people, and you can co-founder of MeetMe’s ancestor myYearbook. She worked on this subject blog post with Geoff Plan () and you will Jeremy Zorn, all of MeetMe, Inc. Read more at the blog:

Imagine the outcry when the Facebook were to alter their title. That nights if we decided to perform some impossible: rebrand a social network employed by more than a million somebody 1 day. I altered title regarding myYearbook, a social network to possess fulfilling new people, in order to MeetMe.

Once i been myYearbook when you look at the high school using my brothers, the name noticed proper. However, our very own service and in what way somebody tried it rapidly generated title obsolete, as we gradually narrowed our very own notice to at least one procedure: fulfilling new-people. The services has been around since the brand new re also-creativeness of your bar, an electronic digital coffeehouse, a supper party place, however, their label described a senior high school reunion. It was not surprising that that we was indeed tend to confused with Classmates by the the key audience – people that had not entered all of us but really.

Immediately after past year’s merger toward Quepasa Firm, i realized we’d the best possibility to favor a reputation that really match, along with the method manage a single all over the world brand name to have fulfilling new-people. Once a great painstaking process of ideation, external and internal surveying from inside the multiple dialects, symbolization development, domain acquisition of meetme and you may , Twitter-deal with purchase of to cease a cooking pot-smoking Elmo event, securing the fresh new ticker Satisfy for the NYSE AMEX, and you will cautious simply click-through rate experimentation – aside from you to late night where you work that have a Ouija panel and you may a rabbit’s foot – i compensated into MeetMe.

There was one state: we’d zero layout having undertaking a beneficial rebrand correct – merely nightmare tales to do they incorrect. Whenever NBCUniversal’s Sci-Fi Station altered its name in order to a jargon label having syphilis, it had been ridiculed. When Netflix launched these people were changing their Dvd-by-mail solution in order to Qwikster, personal outcry and a plummeting inventory rate contributed to a rapid change from agreements. In the event that monster mil-dollars businesses consistently ruin rebrands so terribly, how would hopefully to find through ours unscathed – specifically with a purportedly volatile personal neighborhood.

Yet , that is precisely what i performed. Almost thirty day period after the rebrand, the primary calculating sticks i used to evaluate representative buy and wedding have got all resided regular, or even improved.

We transpired so it highway half of-hoping to eradicate doing double-little finger percent of our own associate feet; rather our very own audience increased

Right from the start, i approached the newest rebrand under zero delusion our professionals perform approve of the transform. Whatever you was performing are seriously unpopular, therefore we know it. One to skills colored all of the choice i made. Even when surveys indicated the players extremely found myYearbook to satisfy new people, they nevertheless really appreciated the name “myYearbook” – anyway, that’s the service it decided to sign up!

I realized this new bet had been highest, but we had been indeed shocked that in other studies simply 17% told you they would never ever visit once again when we changed our name so you’re able to MeetMe. Some may have match com worth it examined an equivalent study and you can envision double on rebranding at all, but we had been pretty happy it was not 80% making that claim. We thought the vast majority of individuals who generated for example an excellent claim would in reality hang in there, as his or her family relations and you can neighborhood is here. We simply needed seriously to make certain i don’t incite a riot otherwise an outrage who would ignite an exodus.