Let's rebrand the name to Graphene

[38PTSWarrior]

Makes me rethink my planned asset name, Chateaux Endeavour, lol

[donkeypong]

Bitshares is hard to understand for first time listeners and graphene even more.

Add: Changing the name seems unimportant to me right now. Important would be to make charity in order to show that we care about poor people. I think that I could do that well.
The people want that. We run this here too conservative. Once the people in the world will see charity, they want to support it. Microfinancing individuals. Perfect job for me but..

The neat thing is that you can develop your own charity asset and promote it that way.

[38PTSWarrior]

Bitshares is hard to understand for first time listeners and graphene even more.

Add: Changing the name seems unimportant to me right now. Important would be to make charity in order to show that we care about poor people. I think that I could do that well.
The people want that. We run this here too conservative. Once the people in the world will see charity, they want to support it. Microfinancing individuals. Perfect job for me but..

[MisO69]

Bitshares is one of the better, if not the best name out there. Its close to Bitcoin and people are still learning about bitcoin. Bitshares seems like the natural progression from a currency (BTC) to an investment (BTS). I don't understand why you think the name is bad. Bit this and Bit that? its part of the branding and I think its quite clever. I would be against any name changes.

[jakub]

I would be open to hearing what a marketing professional has to say about a rebrand.  We need to remember that being a professional does not make you infallible though.  I am leaning pretty heavily against rebranding as a default for pretty much the same reasons empirical pointed out above.  I am willing to listen to reason though.

I am glad to hear this.

I'd like to propose the following actions:

(1) Run a forum poll asking a simple question:
As a name for a decentralized financial ecosystem, which one do you prefer in purely aesthetic terms: BitShares or Graphene?
If the majority of us vote for BitShares we should leave it here.

(2) Ask CNX if they are willing to share the Graphene name with us.
If the answer is negative we should leave it here.

(3) Run a debate involving marketing professionals. I hope we have a couple of them in this community.
The debate should be purely merit-based and for the time being exclude arguments concerning our past marketing-related investments (domain names, publications, info-graphics)
It could also touch the subject of what makes Ethereum so successful in this area - I guess we could learn a couple of things from them.

(4) Set up pro and con delegates and let the shareholders decide.

All I want is to make sure we make an informed rational decision here.
This can turn out to be our once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a rebrand so not doing it is as big a decision as doing it.

**********
Disclaimer: I like the Graphene name but I am not a marketing professional so I have no arguments in this debate.
I am trying to play the role of Jared from Pied Piper - i.e. encourage you to have a proper SWOT analysis 

[BitEnthusiast]

I'm not saying that we should change the name, but I'm not saying we shouldn't either. If you look at Google's history, Larry Page and Sergey Brin nicknamed their search engine "BackRub" then eventually changed their name to Google. Even Yahoo changed their name eventually, before that it was "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web". Both Google (began in 1996 nicknamed "BackRub", changed their name in to Google 1997) and Yahoo (January 1994 (as Jerry and David's guide to the World Wide Web) March 1995 (as Yahoo)) changed their name within a year.

[puppies]

I would be open to hearing what a marketing professional has to say about a rebrand.  We need to remember that being a professional does not make you infallible though.  I am leaning pretty heavily against rebranding as a default for pretty much the same reasons empirical pointed out above.  I am willing to listen to reason though.

[xeroc]

Solution: a pro rename 0% delegate and a contra rename 0% delegate ..

Let shareholders decide

[jakub]

I personally don't think it's worth doing at this stage unless there was really wide community support.

I fully agree - doing it without wide community support would be suicidal.
My point is only this: the community is unwilling to make an informed decision based on professional advice.

If people do not come back because of the bad fame of Bitshares,  then we can consider to change name.

If we do that then the accusations like "this is just a desperate rebranding without any true change" will be quite difficult to fight.

[xiahui135]

I don't think we should change the name.

why not check what result will it be with 2.0?
If people do not come back because of the bad fame of Bitshares,  then we can consider to change name.

[Empirical1.2]

Also as you can see by the response opinions are divided and so it may do more harm than good to the short term valuation which is already pretty low/fragile.

Concerns for short term valuation - that's exactly what I am banging about. The big picture is being lost.

BitShares will seriously struggle with another 3-6 months at this kind of valuation or lower, it will not be able to pay its way and lose valuable time/network effect to other competing projects. All for a rebrand that may or may not improve the long term valuation and effect SEO and a wide range of BitShares related content and other that has been built up the last two years. I personally don't think it's worth doing at this stage unless there was really wide community support.

[jakub]

Also as you can see by the response opinions are divided and so it may do more harm than good to the short term valuation which is already pretty low/fragile.

Concerns for short term valuation - that's exactly what I am banging about. The big picture is being lost.

[Empirical1.2]

My thought process was quite simple: if the community generally likes the Graphene name and our non-existent marketing department says it is a much better name to work with, then we should just have it.
(of course provided that CNX would offer it)

If we limit ourselves to the bitcointalk/coinmarketcap audience or particular domain names that have already been bought or the marketing stuff already produced - then yes, this is a quite painful and possibly risky rebranding issue.

But if we take into account the big picture, where 99% of our future users have not yet heard of BitShares - then this is not a rebranding issue, this a branding issue.
And if it's a branding issue, then IMO it should be decided and managed by professionals who have done it before. Of course with the consent of the community but not driven by its particular interests.

As some have said quite a lot of work has actually gone into developing content, sites and other around the BitShares brand for the last two years, which we just don't see a lot of because BitAssets 1.0 didn't really gain traction.

Also as you can see by the response opinions are divided and so it may do more harm than good to the short term valuation which is already pretty low/fragile.

CNX themselves have some talented marketing guys as shareholders but I was personally unimpressed with the rebranding of BitAssets to Smartcoins - https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,16980.0.html

[jakub]

My thought process was quite simple: if the community generally likes the Graphene name and our non-existent marketing department says it is a much better name to work with, then we should just have it.
(of course provided that CNX would offer it)

If we limit ourselves to the bitcointalk/coinmarketcap audience or particular domain names that have already been bought or the marketing stuff already produced - then yes, this is a quite painful and possibly risky rebranding issue.

But if we take into account the big picture, where 99% of our future users have not yet heard of BitShares - then this is not a rebranding issue, this a branding issue.
And if it's a branding issue, then IMO it should be decided and managed by professionals who have done it before. Of course with the consent of the community but not driven by its particular interests.

That's the situation we are in:
- marketing professionals call for a better name
- we happen to have a better name at our disposal
- we even like this new name ourselves (sumantso excluded)
- 99% of our potential users will not even be aware of the change 
And yet we seem to know better.

I am quite aware that this campaign is probably unwinnable but maybe it will make you realize how fragile we are in our decision making.

[Empirical1.2]

The only person on this forum (that I am aware of) who does marketing as his profession is Method-X.
As I trust Bytemaster with the technical stuff, I would also trust Method-X with the rebranding issue.

The difference in that example is that while Method is a talented marketing professional, BM is one of the top people in the world at what he does which is why you can put a lot of individual trust in him on technical stuff. (However thus far his somewhat transient/impermanent long term commitment to any one project/structure makes it hard for the market to give BTS a strong long term valuation that reflects said talent.)

I've also changed my mind on the rebrand. I think a Graphene blockchain + Liquid BitAssets + the referral programme + the partnerships they've already set up = A very strong comprehensive package that the market will like. So I would avoid anything that could deflect/divide/create controversy in the next two months including rebranding/other blockchains/voting power etc.