Comments on: Domain Branding Mistake by TicketReserve.com

By: Larry Cassman

Larry Cassman — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:47:00 +0000

I invested in Ticket Reserve in 2001, and I always receive mail on what’s going on with the company, but I did not receive anything about the name change! Bad move, will be confused with firstdibs.com, who’s stupid idea was this anyway?

By: shalby

shalby — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 15:35:32 +0000

So whats the update? Looks like they did rebrand.. i never saw the older site, whats the difference now?

***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***

I think the domain name TicketReserve.com is much stronger and easier to recall than FirstDibz.com – especially since they don’t own the name that comes to my mind first – FirstDibs.com. If you tell your buddy, “check out FirstDibz.com,” my guess is he will use an s instead of a z. Now you will have to say, “check out FirstDibz.com with a z.” Just makes it more confusing. TicketReserve.com sounds like a better brand name. You are essentially reserving tickets. First Dibz makes less sense, and it can cause brand confusion.

By: James Lambart

James Lambart — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:05:50 +0000

Hmmm…I agree with the potential problems with the Dibz/Dibs mistake that users might face. That is definitely a potential concern and may cripple business if they cant get the dibs as well. I also do not like the First, not really needed…simply dibs or dibz would have been stronger. However, I do not feel that everyone here is really looking at the industry that ticket reserve must play in here. (most important when looking at branding) The ticketing industry is nasty, established, and cutthroat…and seeing as they do something completely different (sell futures on tickets)…i would assume they were finding it pretty difficult to differentiate against the ticketmasters/stubhubs of the world. they probably got beat on every prospective deal.

Look at their service, they are simply a middle man…not a ticketing company…this gives them the ability to be the middle man for lots of other things. ticket reserve did not…
Not the best re-branding name, but definitely understandable.

By: Conor Neu

Conor Neu — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 10:10:14 +0000

Very interesting. I previously posted a very similar argument about a very similar company, called YooNew.com.

Post: http://www.greentaxi.com/?p=168

They do almost the exact same business, providing an exchange for sports ticket futures, and chose a domain name of what my brother referred to as “baby sounding names”.

I was surprised to hear from the company that they actually owned some of the mispellings, such as YouNew.com, yet decided to go with the typo version to be unique. It is not exactly the same as this rebranding, but similiar in that the could have begun with the more common brand type name, yet they choose to try to be unique by complicating it for users even more.

In the end, I think all of these companies are doing themselves a disservice by moving away from more generic terms to try and create brands. People love to argue about Google and Yahoo, but if those companies had as much power and brand as they do now with a normal name, such as Search.com, they would still be just as powerful and possibly even more so.

My original post is here:
http://www.greentaxi.com/?p=168

My follow up post here:
http://www.greentaxi.com/?p=294

By: Andrew Allemann

Andrew Allemann — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:28:53 +0000

Nice find Elliot.

It’s really quite sad to see a company make such a boneheaded mistake. Ticket Reserve makes plenty of sense to me. I can understand wanting to separate itself from the crowd with a more interesting name, and FirstDibS.com would be good…but c’mon.