In the beginning, there was the Outlook News Aggregator. Not a very imaginative name, but the start to something that would become much more than an Outlook add-in.
About a week later, the name NewsGator was born. I still remember that day...having lunch with a friend, brainstorming about names, and seeing which domains were immediately available. And then ponying up $10 to register the domain, the first expense I can recall that's attributable to NewsGator. :-)
Later in the year, the questions started about "Gator". Folks associate this with the evil spyware company now known as Claria, and we started getting questions about whether we were related to them. Of course we are NOT related to them in any way whatsoever, but nevertheless the question comes up constantly.
Last week we had a board meeting, and kicked around the idea (again) of changing our name. There are obviously both advantages and disadvantages to doing so. We're well known in the space as NewsGator, but on the other hand there are probably sales we're losing because people assume we're evil. It's a tougher decision than one might think, especially at this point in our company life cycle.
So I pose the question to you, my consistently insightful readers. Do you think we should change the company name? Why or why not?
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