Good on the Open Source Media/OSM/Pajamas Media folks for deciding to go back to their Pajamas moniker to do so with humor and grace:
So how did this happen in the first place? Back at the beginning, certain, shall we say, paternalistically minded parties (i.e., the guys in suits) decided that we should act like grownups, and being as yet somewhat immature—at least as businesspeople–we did as we were told.Which is how, one day, we ended up sitting around a conference table listening to representatives from a “branding” company. What followed is still a bit of a nightmarish blur, but it involved a PowerPoint presentation on the history of names, and such probing questions as, “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?” (Which is how we almost ended up as Jellyfish Media.)
Yes, sometimes having money can cause more problems than not having it. If you can’t afford a branding agency, then you trust yourself. And that, above all, is what blogs are about, eh?
Oops! I just sent JJ an email thinking I was telling him news. (Should have hit “refresh” on my browser before I hit “send” on my email)
Jeff, you’re a bully. Making poor bloggers change the name of their companies through a public “squeezing”. Shame on you.
(It’s a good change though.)
The marketing people were correct though. Pajamas is a bad name. The mistake was not in choosing a different name per se; but rather their choice of OSM Open Source Media, which was breathtakingly idiotic.
Now they go back to their old, poor name. *shrugs*
I for one, welcome our new Internet overlords.
I think the Pajamas name is fun and I’m glad they’ve gone with their first instinct.
Greg,
Good one. Is that overlord line taken from a movie or something??
Is it humorous and graceful to blame your mistakes on unnamed men-in-suits (presumably your investors) and similarly unnamed
scapegoatsconsultants?Blame the suits. Me, poor reluctant CEO, Roger Simon–boo hoo.. Give me a break. The “groovy” in the first sentence. And all the other prose: “Gag me with a mitre.”
Pajamas Media was already a brand name, no need to screw with it. And, if you don’t believe the VC suits will put their proctology scopes in your most private places, you’ve never had to deal with them. It’s called due diligence in the parlance of the trade.
I wish Pajamas the best of luck. It’s their product that will doom them or help them succeed.
[...] addendum: Jeff Jarvis’ post here made me wonder if I was being a twisted old cynic, but some of the commenters changed my mind back again. And yes, I will get bored with this story sooner rather than later, no doubt. [...]
So much for OoopSM.
Now if they can redesign that dry, uninteresting layout so it doesn’t look so cold and soulless…
VC suits will put their proctology scopes in your most private places, you’ve never had to deal with them.
If you’re talking due diligence, that’s true, but once the VC has decided to fund a venture, they’ll let the men who founded the companies run the business as they see fit. VCs don’t come in to manage ventures, they come in to fund ventures.
As far as that “branding company” scenario, I call bullshit: Roger Simon had a thread on his site a while back asking for commenters to rename Pajama; Open Source Media was one of the suggestions. This really seems like OSM or Pajama or whatever made a silly mistake in naming their company, and are now trying to pass responsibility off to the people who funded them. It’s yet another in a series of little deceptions that have plagued OSM since it launched and makes many observers seriously doubt the “openness” of this outfit.
For a look at the growing cast of characters:
http://www.christiangrantham.com/blog/archives/000013.php
Here’s the thread on Roger’s site:
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/06/pajamas_media_q_2.php
So is he telling us now that his commenters are a “branding company?” This is such a joke.
Nice spot, In Vino. The excuses continue to ring hollow…
good for them.
without any sarcasm i can honestly say that i like that name. it fits what they attest to being perfectly.
maybe now the Instapundit wont be so shy about talking about them.
“Pajamas Media” is perfectly fine with the Alzheimer’s ads that were running to the right.
Earlier today you could link straight over to the article… now it links to some type of fill in the blank registration page… WTF???
It’s because OSM.org runs on the Plone CMS, and someone changed the access control of said page from anon user, i.e. anonymous website user, to user, i.e. logged-in user.
Earlier today you could link straight over to the article… now it links to some type of fill in the blank registration page… WTF???
That’s exactly why I put it here when I posted about the name change.
What a gimmick!!!!!!!!! get folks to link to a particular page on a site – and then put it behind a registration wall.
It’s new location is here:
http://www.osm.org/site/story/copy_of_11212005namechange?currow=1
The article is on their home page, under Top Stories, and has been all day.
Thats for people going direct to the site. The url that got propagated out thru thousands of blogs got changed.
Check out Jeff’s post or today’s Slashdot post.
Sloppy at the least. Manipulative at the worst.
Karl, I don’t have a problem with it. The article was on their home page all day. You can expect a few teething problems with a new launch. I’m williing to cut them that much slack. It’s not like their site was down.
I shouldn’t have called it a gimmick. That’s unfair. Beyond that – I’ll stick by the rest. You absolutely should give folks some slack on launch. Shoot – as far as any online service goes – you should give folks slack – established or not. This is still a new world no matter what someone is selling you.
http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1611.htm
Being transparent, open and humble all help to earn slack. Otherwise – when you bang your head – you will definately get called on it.
Thanks Karl. I enjoyed that article.
I hope, if I ever look to be on the way to such a situation, someone yells at me to “Stoop, stoop!”. That person would be a good friend for doing so.
My father had a friend who was a butcher and they were always kidding each other. One day my father stopped in to chat with him and he sent him home with a “little something special” wrapped in brown paper. When my father got home, looking forward to a nice sirloin steak, he handed the package to my mother and asked her to fry it up. She opened it and found a pile of fish heads.
I hope that should I ever recieve a pile of fish heads from a friend that I can laugh like my father did and plot revenge with the same lighthearted glee.
?
So let me get this straight – you think the Pajama folks are planning revenge with “lighthearted glee” and that they got a gift of fish heads from their critics?
Actually, no, I just liked that story, but if everyone would like to believe that I was being deep and meaningful, I’m certainly going to do nothing to dispel that myth.
Some out there are calling for another launch partayy.
Heh.
I agree with Jeff this time (LHM): “PJs are just so comfy”.
[...] The blogosphere abhors a hierarchy. [...]
Sorry I fell for that guff about a branding company. Another Simon fib.
As a commenter points out here, the change of name was fully discussed on Simon’s site, and Open Source was suggested there.
Now John Kerry needs to get his name back from this software company that used to be called ScanSoft.
You know they ripped it off from him, because how many other people think “nuance” means “a strong, clear and unified position”?
The X over OSM still beats CNN’s X over Cheney.
Jeff, there’s been nothing humorous or graceful out of OSM/Pajamas/Occupant so far.
I give it ’til next fall, myself. After the fiscal quarter, if they haven’t developed any significant ad revenue, look for the investors to at least oust Roger and Charles in favor of their own management team, if they don’t pull the plug entirely… and a 3-million investment, though most of us would goggle at it, simply isn’t enough to justify the expense of headhunting and installing a new management team.
Jeff, your posts on the naming saga of Pajamas Media are right on target. Pajamas Media got caught up in the whirlwind of the funding cycle and even though they’re a “web 2.0″ company it seems like they took a few plays out of the “web. 1.0″ handbook. (A launch at the Rainbow Room with Judy Miller? How many bloggers hang out there?). I should have sent them my post on naming a company (Forget Marketing Alchemy: The Realist’s Process for Naming a Company). To your point, they need to spend more time thinking about the company and what they want to be (and why) than picking logos and party planning.
sour grapes Jeff, exactly Leslie, style over substance is the wrong investment strategy for the Pajamas conglomerates.
After reading up some on how this venture came to be, we see the cheating, backstabbing, lying, scumbag, mentality crept into the minds of some in the blogosphere. This Pajamas media will crash before the end of the year.
Enough of that, How bout a Bloggers take over of Nightline, a perfect timeslot. The 3 hosts they’re going to have won’t hold!! ABC needs to think big here in order to develop and invest in the future of media presentation. This is a chance for an alternative media formatibilty to step in. Which is the NAKED NEWS!!!!!!! YES!!!!!! SEE THE MONEY TO MADE HERE ABC!!!!!! Elizabeth Vargas, Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer host Naked News Nightline.