Towards the end of the
dot-com boom I worked for a company that decided to
rebrand all of their software to make it sound more "
webby". The
marketing geniuses went out drinking over lunch apparently and came back with the earth shattering form of {target market}.dot.commerce. Thus the
retail management software became retail.dot.commerce,
business analysis software became
analytics.dot.commerce, and for some reason
supply chain management became
collaborate.dot.commerce rather than supply.dot.commerce.
We (the technical group) tried to explain two things at this point. First that slapping a new name on a 10 year old product doesn't make it "web-enabled". This went very very far over their heads. Second and probably more immediately pressing in terms of dealing with potential customers, the name is stupid.
human being: Um, 'retail dot dot dot commerce' is your software?
marketing being: No, it's 'retail dot commerce'.
human being: But there's a dot before and after the word dot.
marketing being: Those are silent, like when you tell someone a website you say 'double u double u double dot website dot com'
human being: Um, that wasn't silent.
marketing being: But in our software it is.