The BitShares Brand

[bytemaster]

An often overlooked issue when attempting to establish credibility/branding is the quality of writing.  Inviticus appears to have sharp, forward-looking, creative people, but their writing skills just aren't on the same level.  Heck, the present company homepage wasn't even run through a spellchecker: "concensus" is not a word. 

I'll admit I was initially turned off when I first started looking at the DAC concepts because the explanatory writing was not at a professional level.  American idioms and metaphors are used and these are not going to play well with an international audience.  Sloppy writing is not going to dissuade everybody (and I eventually became a Protoshare investor), but why add an additional barrier?

Impressions count for a lot.  Going to a job interview wearing jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt doesn't automatically dismiss you as an under-qualified candidate.  Most potential employers, however, aren't going to make the extra effort to determine if you've got the desired skills if you present yourself poorly. 

Cleaning up the writing will go a long way to promoting the company and its ideas.

Have no fear, Brian Page is here.  We just spent an entire weekend working on cleaning up how we explain things and by the time we get to the Miami conference everything will be different. 

[Yui Xie]

An often overlooked issue when attempting to establish credibility/branding is the quality of writing.  Inviticus appears to have sharp, forward-looking, creative people, but their writing skills just aren't on the same level.  Heck, the present company homepage wasn't even run through a spellchecker: "concensus" is not a word. 

I'll admit I was initially turned off when I first started looking at the DAC concepts because the explanatory writing was not at a professional level.  American idioms and metaphors are used and these are not going to play well with an international audience.  Sloppy writing is not going to dissuade everybody (and I eventually became a Protoshare investor), but why add an additional barrier?

Impressions count for a lot.  Going to a job interview wearing jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt doesn't automatically dismiss you as an under-qualified candidate.  Most potential employers, however, aren't going to make the extra effort to determine if you've got the desired skills if you present yourself poorly. 

Cleaning up the writing will go a long way to promoting the company and its ideas.

[Giga]

Great thinking. I gotta get me some more BitShares PTS before this news gets out!

I just exchanged all my PTS for BitShares PTS^TM at the rate 1:1!

You are kidding about this right?

Yes

 

[5chdn]

Great thinking. I gotta get me some more BitShares PTS before this news gets out!

I just exchanged all my PTS for BitShares PTS^TM at the rate 1:1!

You are kidding about this right?

Yes

[Giga]

Great thinking. I gotta get me some more BitShares PTS before this news gets out!

I just exchanged all my PTS for BitShares PTS^TM at the rate 1:1!

You are kidding about this right?

[Giga]

I'm a big advocate of branding I love where this is going. I believe in the modern world branding plays a huge role, I didn't find the post confusing at all.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[toast]

Stan - thank you so much! Your response was helpful and clear. I am ready to endorse this change now.

So the short-term plan of action would be to make sure we properly commit to this branding strategy for what is now BEXShares. In particular, making it clear that investor's pts/ags are still giving them the same amount of equity in the same technology.

We should also do things like rename the bitshares subforum to BEX, update the bounties, and update all the descriptions of BEX out in the wild, like the whitepaper various intro videos. Bitshares may not take up much of the public's headspace, but much of the early adopter community will need to be caught up.

[santaclause102]

I think that makes a lot of sense and is perfectly sound.

But consider that Bitcoin (or BITCOIN respectively) being referred as a generic term for all crypto currencies comes from Bitcoin being the de facto standard. There was no marketing that implemented that...

The challenge here is to on the one hand not confuse the average user with 5 different meanings of the same word (Bitshares) but at the same time implement what you just presented. The first thing has no. 1 priority short to medium term. The latter might evolve a bit on its own if bitshares de facto grows to where it would earn to be referred as the standard in crypto equity.

The conclusion would be: Follow your hidden agenda of Bitshares' perception ex- or implicitly as long as it doesn't confuse people and deter anyone from using it. 

[Stan]

I've collected everything I'm trying to say in one post to make replying easier.

Thanks for the answers and patience from Stan and others. I'm arguing with you guys because I think this is a *really* important issue and that you haven't realized how much confusion it could cause.

Please tell me what the new names are for ALL of these concepts. They should have clear names and should be overloaded only if the terms can only appear in different contexts.
If you find this challenging, don't go ahead with this re-branding until we figure everything out.

Names:
1) What was formerly known as BitShares, the awesome innovation that is the distributed-prediction-market-based polymorphic digital asset exchange
2) The core asset in the original BitShares chain, formerly BTS
3) The whole system of prediction-market-based exchanges
4) An arbitrary new instance of (1), which is a part of (3)
5) An arbitrary new core asset, the core asset of a (4)
6) An invictus-endorsed crypto-equity (the NEW BitShares)

(my answers after my moment of clarity are: 1) BEX for the concept as a whole, BEXCurrency for the root chain 2) BEX 3) BEX 4) BEX***, BEXchain 5) BEX***Share 6) BitShares )
(second point of confusion: do non-primary chains have *separate* base units, like BEXStockShares? or do BEX aka BitShares1.0 units get transferred into the new chain?)

And, on top of that naming challenge, a question: Could there possibly be a DAC you release whose equity you do NOT call a BitShare? If so, give an example; if not, acknowledge that "BitShares" is essentially the new name for "I3 DAC".

Put another way: bitshares are a sub-thing of i3 DACs. What kinds of DACs might you make that aren't a sub-thing of bitshares?

This is important too

Keyhotee is not a DAC

I understand. I'm asking, is there anything that would be a DAC, but would not be a BitShare, under the new scheme.

It is already getting a lot of attention and it has a nice parallelism with Bitcoin, which in the public mind has become virtually synonymous with the crypto-currency ecosystem, including all its altcoins.  We hope that BitShares will serve a similar function for the crypto-equity domain.

This is for one very simple reason:  bit-shares is the perfect parallel to bit-coin for communicating the duality (and differences) and between crypto-equities and crypto-currencies.  No other name would do for that purpose.

But "bitcoin" doesn't mean "cryptocurrency"! Nobody says "litecoin and peercoin are two examples of bitcoins".
You are making the analogy to bitcoin LESS applicable. bitcoin:currency::bitshares:equity worked better for the OLD definition. You can't own a bitshare anymore, for example.

Thank you for all your deep thinking!

Let's start with the last point first:  If you think of just bitcoin vs Bitcoin you are very right.
If you consider that there is a third unused capitalization, BITCOIN, then maybe you can see our motivation.

bitcoin is a unit of a specific currency.
  Bitcoin is a standard which has been used to implement multiple alt-currencies from many developers.
    BITCOIN is the not-too-informed general public's name for any crypto-currency.  (Kleenex = tissues)
    BITSHARES would be what we hope first dawn's in the public's mind as a crypto-equity.
  BitShares is a standard which could used to implement multiple alt-equities from many developers.
bitshares could be the unit of a specific equity, but which one?  There will be many such exchanges.

BITCOIN and BITSHARES won't be used explicitly, but Bitcoin and BitShares have that unspoken flagship function which is distinct from representing their own standards for deriving specific instances of coins and shares.  What other name than BitShares could serve this role better?

And "shares" isn't confined to just "things that trade shares".  Every unmanned company we can envision will have shares, whatever their business models.

But, just as there are alt-coins that aren't built to Bitcoin standards, there will surely be alt-shares that aren't built to BitShares standards.  The main distinguishing feature is the BitShares Social Consensus License.

So there is still room for much discussion on most of your naming conventions. For example, if you have to name the currencies of each exchange anyway, why should the shares of BitShares BEX get to be just "bitshares"?  Because they were the first?

It would be more uniform to have BEXshares, CEXshares, LKSshares, etc. and let bitshares be the generic name for them all.

BitShares BEX would have BEXshares,
BitShares LKS would have LKSshares, and so on.

So far, we have only introduced a top-down branding strategy for
how public attention will be drawn to the equities of PTS and AGS holders.
(and how they can be associated so that they reinforce each other).
That's the main purpose of having a brand.

The remaining questions you ask are still valid topics for robust discussion in this forum.  Thanks for posing them.

[luckybit]

Ok two more questions:

What's the new "short name" the thing Dan is currently working on? BEX?

As per my previous post, where do you draw the line between crypto-equity that counts as bitshares? BitShares Litecoin is crypto-equity in the litecoin currency DAC!

Again, my proposed criteria: honoring pts/ags, and cross-chain trading with other bitshares (base case being BEX)

Those two criteria certainly make a good start! 
It also has to be endorsable, i.e. compatible with our core principles. 
I don't think BitShares SlaveTrader would fly...   

Sometimes just a name which sounds cool is better than a name which means anything. You give it meaning after it's in people's heads. What is a Firefox? I don't know but the logo looks cool and it sounds cool.

[toast]

Also, read bytemaster's post. Notice you two have different ideas of what "bitshares" should represent.

You can give "bitshares" a promotion - promote it to "the main unit of crypto-equity" in the bitshares asset hair ecosystem.

[toast]

Stan can you please address my post where I ask you guys to name the list of 6 concepts?

You want to achieve parallelism in the public eye.
Bitcoin is the flagship cryptocurrency.
Bitshares should be the flagship cryptoequity.

[bitcoinba]

Here is my take:

"Bitshares: the digital standard for assets and equities." or even simpler "Bitshares: the digital standard of value exchange."

From merriam webster:

Standard:
3
:  something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example
4
:  something set up and established by authority as a rule for the measure of quantity, weight, extent, value, or quality
5
b :  the basis of value in a monetary system <the gold standard>

[Stan]

Bitshares is a distributed-prediction-market-based polymorphic digital asset exchange, but are you honestly going to say that on an elevator to someone? We need to shorten that to something understandable. Bitcoin - Digital Currency. Bitshares -  Assets Exchange?

Nope, BitShares is not an asset exchange anymore. You're thinking of BitShares BEX. BitShares is a loose collection of I3 DACs which all have the common theme that they relate to equity. What you're suggesting would be natural and easy to market, but we have a new Branding Strategy^TM

You can own a bitcoin. You can't own a bitshare (anymore). You can own a unit of a thing which has the brand BitShares prepended to it though.

Ah ok. Makes sense. Really love this concept now.

Yes, from the public/media's point of view we want to achieve this parallelism:

BitShares is to crypto-equities
what
Bitcoin is to crypto-currencies

[Stan]

•   BitShares LKS is our brand for LuckyShares – robotically honest gaming.
 

Any relation to: https://github.com/LuckyCoinProject/Luckycoin ?


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=214614.0

No, LKS will be far more lucky...