DISQUS

Chris Baskind dot com: How Cuil Is It to Misspell Your Brand Name?

  • LPH · 1 year ago
    I agree that the brand name is rather strange. I remember thinking the same when Google was announced as well as the processor name Celeron. Maybe they'll take your suggestion and go for cool.com -it is far easier to remember!
  • rafalski · 1 year ago
    cùil also means a fly, or a bug in general
  • Jenna · 1 year ago
    Interesting.. Sounds like a complete mess!
  • Mig · 1 year ago
    Good points... I already misspell it... Ciul! I wonder if they considered asking a branding expert before releasing this...
  • Adam_Y · 1 year ago
    I spend all day playing around with words at work, making them sound funny and look funny... but y'know, I didn't realise that it was supposed to be pronounced 'cool'... I had, 'see you ill', 'coo-ill' and a host of others...

    I doubt this one is going to do very well, I've been terstingg it on sites I know, including my own and it's nowhere near as accurate as it should be.
  • mediaguy · 1 year ago
    Interesting site, what about cuil-aid but that would probably upset the children that drink kool-aid,possibly brandable though
  • Xander Becket · 1 year ago
    Yeah, at this initial stage when nobody is familiar with the company, getting over that initial Silicon-Valley weird naming problem can be pretty tough. And it's web design 101 to snatch up all the top-level domains for your website. That was retarded of them.

    But, then again, nobody goes to googol.com, yahue.com, or mibo.com looking for those companies anymore.
  • Katherine · 1 year ago
    I checked Cuil out when I saw the press on it, by running some searches I look for daily. They just weren't on there. I "cuiled" Katherine Peters, a fairly common name, and the server crashed. I really hope they get their act together, but they also brought it upon themselves. I'm sure they let the media know it was launching on Sunday, and they under-prepared for it. A little sad.
  • Fuego999 · 1 year ago
    I agree the name is plain stupid, and the search isn't even any good yet, i think all they have going for them is a big buzz just because they are "former google employees".
  • BC seo · 1 year ago
    The name is bad enough, but their results really stink.
    And they display pictures beside links that aren't even from that site!

    Their going now where from what I can see.
  • AlexSchleber · 1 year ago
    Excellent analysis, I came to a similar conclusion here:

    http://businessmindhacks.com/post/cuil-knol-and-other-crimes-against-branding

    But you have me beat on Gaelic research depth... :)

    This launch and their branding has killed any normal hopes for them IMO, such that Scoble and others may be right in their assessment that the "launch" was really just a play to be bought out by MSFT for the search technology. They must have known that they weren't ready (e.g. the image mix-ups, etc.).
  • Ryan · 1 year ago
    With the images associated with the results for my name, I'm obviously not impressed by cuil thusfar:

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/laze/2711216544/
  • andretannus · 1 year ago
    not to mention the literall meaning of "cool", which is COLD.

    cuil.com is both dark, cornered and cold.

    yet again, they forgot the number one single most important rule about branding a new international name: CHECK WHAT IS MEANS AND SOUNDS LIKE IN OTHER MAJOR LANGUAGES.

    After Cantonese, english spanish and portuguese are quite widely spoken worldwide. I´m a native Portuguese speaker, and here "cool" sounds astoundingly like "CÚ", (read coo in english), and is the ugliest most distorted and impolite way to refer to someone´s "anus", and also means someone who is extremely incompetent and inconvenient.

    Imagine someone asking someone else where they found something, to hear the person say something that sounds tremendously like "I found it up my asshole", or maybe some girl telling her subordinate assistant to look for "whatever" in his ass!!!!!! AACKKKKKK!!!

    I know "culo" is arse in spanish, and probably similar in any other latin derived language...

    what the hell are these people thinking? Didn´t they get a freeking manual on how to pick names?

    I can almost... no, I can DENIFETLY picture Mr. Costello sitting in his fat ass eating one of the already famous strawberry bowls an looking at Mrs. Patterson and deciding that they should name their new baby after daddy´s heritage, and americanly slamming the hammer without giving it another thought...

    what a waste of 33 million dollars... what a waste...