Mobile Music

One of my best 14 mobile blogs was, of course, The Feature, which has an annoying habit of writing posts that I was about to write :-)

Carlo Longino, Exec Editor of The Feature, has just started a new blog of his own. The Mobile Music Weblog covers errr….why don’t you take a wild guess?

Good luck to Carlo – why don’t you pop over and check it out? There’s some great stuff there already.

So does this mean I’ll have to have a Best 15 Mobile Blogs? I was growing rather fond of 14 :-(

On a wider issue, I have a question for readers.

There’s four ways I can think of to name blogs. Which do you prefer – please leave me a comment, as it makes me so happy. No really, it does.

1. A purely descriptive blog name, like The Mobile Weblog or The Mobile Music Weblog.

2. Something more clever which implies the subject, like many of Gawker’s titles (like Gizmodo, Fleshbot, Jalopnik).

3. Something just a little off the wall, like Boing Boing or Pasta and Vinegar. I can’t think of many more examples of these.

4. Named after the author, like The Doc Searls Weblog, Dan Gillmor of Grassroots Journalism. Strictly speaking, Dan’s is a combination of both 1 and 4, I guess.

Do you have any preferences, or don’t you care? Even if you don’t care, please say so.

Thanks

Russell

—–>Follow us on Twitter too: @russellbuckley and @caaarlo

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  • Roy
    what do you think of the name mobicult? I thought of several names...but in the end I picked this one.
  • I had to make this choice when naming my LBS blog, and settled on purely-descriptive because I think it'll get quicker dispersion through the blogosphere? Which is quite important for new blogs... Unless you're linked by another high-traffic site (like Slashdot or Engadget), having a non-descriptive name can be a bit of a handicap, I think. i.e. if pasta & vinegar was not so often linked-to, I would never have known it was a worthwhile tech blog! So for topical blogs (i.e. not personal blogs), I'd go with descriptive. =)
  • Lyle
    Gizmodo, Engadget, Moores Lore and the like are my favourites. They have humour, you have to already have crossed a certain threshhold of knowledge to get them and are therefore ever so slightly exclusive. Combining this with the author name only works if the authors 'character' is part of the show.

    Cheers
    Lyle
  • Hi

    Thanks for the comments, chaps.

    I've read most (all?) of Seth and the Reis and Trout book too, as it happens.

    My take on all the brand name theory (including once blowing £50,000 with a brand naming agency - what a waste of time) is that the best brand names are a combination on the emotive and the descriptive.

    StepStone (now Europe's largest recruitment agency) is a good example - allegedly.

    So Boing Boing is emotive and thus scores well, but not really descriptive (though you can post rationalise some meaning).

    Mobile Weblog is descriptive purely.

    On this evaluation, Dan's site does do pretty well, being decriptive and a little emotive with the "grassroots" element.

    Keep the comments coming, please!

    Russell
  • Hi Russell,

    I'm a literal kind of guy myself, so I tend to go with purely descriptive. Hence the somewhat boring (but descriptive) "Mobile Dublin" for my blog about ... you guessed it: mobile data services available in Dublin.

    Seth Godin has some interesting advice though. He says "a brand name is a peg that people use to hang all the attributes of your business. The LESS it has to do with your category, the better". I guess this applies to blogs too, hence "Boing Boing".
  • Hi Russell,

    We aim to please, and I love making people happy, so heres a comment.

    From a branding prespective Dan's blog name is great. Just from the name one knows what and who to expect. There's a marketing classic which deals with the concept of naming called "Positioning" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. It covers naming for individuals and companies. Highly recommended.
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