I’m a huge fan of JanRain and what they’re doing with their products, especially the RPX product (more on the products below). I think there’s going to be a huge business here, and they’re poised to capture it.
That said, I’m not a huge fan of the product names themselves, and I wonder if they’re holding JanRain back a bit. Meaningless letter names are a common, but less than ideal solution to the challenge of naming products. They provide no clue for understanding the differences between the products and they’re not memorable. A good product name should do both. By contrast, the Company name, JanRain, is great…it is completely memorable. Once you know about JanRain, you’ll never forget the name. It does what a good company/brand name should do – stick in the mind.
Back to the products. JanRain’s other product is OPX. RPX and OPX. One of the products allows site operators to accept logins via 3rd party credentials / OpenID (i.e. I can use my Facebook login to log onto your site), and receive authenticated profile data in the process. The other product allows site operators to become a 3rd party credentials provider. Any idea which does which? Read the rest of this entry »
Filed under: Marketing
