VisitSweden Development Blog

It’s not easy naming something. Whatever it is that you’re naming has to live with this name for a very long time. It’s taken a while to come up with a name but we’ve finally got it and we’re very happy with it.
Let me tell you the story.

Selection process

We started to write all kinds of names on a whiteboard in Basecamp. Any suggestion was ok. Even a bad name can lead to a new good idea.
After we had a good long list and no more suggestions seemed forthcoming I started the selection process.
I first threw away some that I knew would never make it.
I then had a list of about 20 names. How to proceed?

Letting you guys vote

We wanted to publish this list here on the development blog to let our readers vote on which names they liked. This would be the ultimate way to pick a name for the community and we loved the idea!
As we were about to do it though, we changed our minds. What if somebody likes a name so much that they steal it? Register the domain for themselves. We would have to register all the domains on the list just in case. This whole idea suddenly seemed risky and ineffective.

Internal voting

So instead I emailed every single person in the company and let them pick three favourites. Everybody chipped in and I quickly got all the votes needed.
The winner: mysweden.com
Great name! We loved it! It makes you think of communities(myspace, hello?), user generated content, a personal touch, everything we wanted really. We even started to use it as a working name for the community.
Unfortunately it turned out that this domain was already taken and the owners were not willing to sell it.
We offered millions and still they refused! Ok, perhaps not millions…

So, back to the list.
It’s somewhere around here that “CommunityOfSweden.com” started to sound really good.

• It is completely self explanatory. Not everybody has the queens english you know so an easy name is important.
• It’s 100% search engine optimized. We like that. No, we love that.
• It has a strong name with some extra familiarity to brands like “Tiger of Sweden” and others, I’m sure.
• And let’s not forget our amazing embassy in Washington: “House of Sweden”.

I tested the name on everybody in the marketing and communications department and after sleeping on it everybody agreed on the name.

Phew… it’s been said that Swedes are slow to make decisions but when we do make them they are well anchored in the organization. I think this whole process proves it.

Go ahead and visit http://communityofsweden.com
It’s almost time for beta testing

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