Most people in the tech world know of the impressive resume of Leo Laporte: radio host, podcaster for TWiT (This Week in Tech), author, host of the former TechTV show Call for Help, well respected Mac fan and the list goes on.

Laporte also has the most followers on Twitter, the #1 Twitterer, if you will according to twitterholic. Also rounding out the top 5 is everybody’s favorite Sith Lord: Darth Vader. Takes almost a perfect bowling score of 300 followers to make the top 100 Twitterholic list. I’m not apt to get there any time soon hanging around in Twitter squatter mode, how about you? Twitterholics Anonymous, anyone?

Laporte is worried people will confuse Twitter with his podcast name
Soon will have been the #1 Twitterer past tense as Laporte announced he’s quitting Twitter:

Twitter has nothing to do with TWiT. And, I’m afraid, I can’t have anything to do with Twitter, either. It’s just fueling the confusion. Fortunately, there are several similar services including Groovr, Dodgeball, and Jaiku.

Had heard of and written here before about Dodgeball (twice, in fact). Haven’t heard of Groovr.

Get your poetry book ready for Jaiku
Jaiku sounds like somebody trying to recite bad Haiku after one too many drinks. At least according to Rafe Needleman at CNET, Jaiku has more bells and whistles than Twitter. Needleman also thinks if you hate Twitter, you’ll hate Jaiku too.

I don’t hate Twitter. It seems to have a couple worthwhile uses and I’m sure it will become even more useful if/when more people start using the service for productive purposes. My primary concern for Twitter — and any business that wants to have any longevity– is that the service itself doesn’t have a business model. Recently, Jason Calacanis interviewed Evan Williams on Twitter and at one point there was a confirmation on this lack of a business model. Jason wondered how much all these twitter SMS messages were costing and pinned down Williams on it being “five digits” [a month]. So Twitter is popular and burning through money somewhere between $10,000 - $99,999 per month.

However, lack of a business model didn’t stop Google from buying YouTube another well known money losing site. And neither did owning their own video service (Google Video), so maybe the Twitter crew is being lined up in the Google crosshairs? I’m sure Obvious corp CEO Williams wouldn’t object, as he was part of the crew that sold Pyra Labs Blogger to Google.

Hmm.

Back to Laporte and the whole twit/twitter naming confusion
Tony thinks Laporte is “acting like a petulant child.”

Laporte also cites Twitter-related software causing name conflicts like Steven Hodson’s TwitBox for Windows Vista. Naming software can be a pain and I’m sure Mr. Hodson wasn’t trying to infringe on Twitter by choosing Twitbox. Can’t imagine he ever thought he might be infringing on Laporte’s podcast name either. It’s sort of like the comparison between the Beatles Apple label and Apple computers.

And then there is the word “twit” which 12-12-12.org defines as:

A mild English expletive used by some British children to describe someone who has done something rather silly or stupid.

The define:twit operator leads to three definitions for twit, one of them as Laporte’s podcast name.

Hmm thoughts
My take’s pretty simple: Laporte is being a twit. Twitter isn’t soiling his brand. He’s the one who brought his army of fans to the service and he’s realizing after the fact that because of the name he doesn’t want to “confuse” people? Come on, talk about insulting people’s intelligence, Leo.

This trademark stuff over common names is reaching disturbing levels. Pretty soon we’re not going to be able to use the name of anything. Maybe I should trademark Thursawday now? I wonder if by June 4, 2020 I’ll be leaving services because they sound too much like Thursawday.

(j/k on the last sentence)

Seriously, if you want to name software that goes along with the name of a service you almost have to use some variation on the service name so people know the software supports the service. Similar to the sites that evangelized — or leeched off, whatever your perspective — the digg sites.

Though I’ve been uncomfortable doing this with programs, I’ve done this in the past myself. For example, I had a billing processing program that worked with the online billing processor IBill. I called my program Ezibill (program has since been retired). Not only didn’t IBill have a problem, they listed my script site as one of the half dozen or so approved script vendors. That’s the way it should work. I wasn’t trying to damage their trademark, my software only worked with their service. I didn’t go so far as registering a domain for ezibill though, which is good in hindsight since eventually Ibill released their own processing scripts (for free) to their customers.

Meanwhile you have GAIM changing their name to Pidgin over a naming dispute with AOL. Naming disputes are sometimes valid and at least in this case both were instant messaging programs.

Bottom line in this case: Laporte should have chosen a non-common acronym for This Week in Tech podcast if he didn’t want to run into naming conflicts. I can understand his concern if the service was called ThisWeekInTechChat but Twitter? Considering his show targets a tech audience, I wonder how many of his listeners will be offended that he doesn’t think they are smart enough to understand the services aren’t related?

Ironic that both TWiT and Twitter chose a blue color palette (see logos at top of post). Let’s hope color trademarking isn’t next.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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