publish rebranding blog post

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Ryan Nystrom
2017-08-17 23:40:51 -04:00
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title: Rebranding
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In case you haven't looked into it, the app name "Freetime" ranks *really poorly* on the App Store. So bad, that if you just search the word "freetime", this app wont show up on the list before your fingers get tired from scrolling down...
I wanted to try and update my keywords to improve ranking, but my keywords:
```
github, open, source, notification, manager, git, pull, request, issue
```
were basically useless.
> Seriously, who is going to search "pull request"?
One of the core principles about marketing an app is that you have a *unique and meaningful name*. The name "freetime" is absolutely garbage, even if I have an attachment to it.
> Do open source in your "free time". Get it?
So I went back to the drawing board and did a _lot_ of brainstorming, trying to find a name that would:
- Convey something about the app's focus
- Be playful
- Unique (almost no apps that show up when searching just the name)
- Have an available .com domain
- Appending "app" or "-app" (see [freetime-app.com](http://freetime-app.com)) is ok
- Have an available twitter handle
- Only appending "app" is ok for me
For a few nights I mulled over some options...
![img_5445 jpg](https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/739696/29391536-f7fd6014-82c5-11e7-985a-f4b0a9bc6a2d.jpeg)
I used a few techniques to mine inspiration:
- Scanned the [GitHub topic on ProductHunt](https://www.producthunt.com/topics/github) and just took notes on unique names or keywords
- Searched the App Store for things like "GitHub", "Mail", "Inbox", "Notify" and collected some unique words
- Even searched Dribbble for the same words
I came up with a few leads that I liked:
- "Tree", "branch" and "twig" (playing on `git branch`)
- Something + "Box" since this is basically a mail/inbox-style app
> You have no idea how disappointed I was after finding there are no App Store results for "gitbox" to discover that [Gitbox](http://gitboxapp.com/) is a successful Mac app... 😭
I also started circling the concept of "chirp" (derived from "notify"). That lead me to birds. What about "Git"+bird-something? I explored this a little and landed on this trifecta:
- There are **0 results** when searching "githawk" on the App Store. ✔️ uniqueness
- The Twitter handle [@githawk](twitter.com/githawk) is available. Nabbed.
- The fucking domain [githawk.com](githawk.com) is available for only $10/y!! 😱
So without further adieu, Freetime will now be called **GitHawk**! 🎉
I'll need to figure out what to do with the repo name. The Xcode project is going to keep the name Freetime in-memoriam.