This morning, TechCrunch reported the launch of a new quiz website called Qzzr. According to the article, Qzzr “officially launches today with an infusion of $2 million in seed money and partnerships.” Backers and partners of Qzzr include companies such as ESPN, Yahoo, Mashable, and a number of angel investors and investment firms. It looks like it’s a cool website that we will hear quite a bit about via social media.
The first thing I noticed was the brand name and spelling, Qzzr. To me and perhaps others, Qzzr sounds a lot like Quizzer. This wouldn’t be so bad if the company had managed to buy the Quizzer.com domain name (See update below), but it doesn’t appear to have done so. In fact, if you visit Quizzer.com, you’ll see that the website is most definitely not safe for work (it looks like it forwards to an adult website right now).
Before someone claims that Quizzer.com is trying to capitalize on the Qzzr traffic, you should note that Quizzer.com has been registered for nearly two decades. The registration is set to private, so I can’t see who owns it. Quizzer.com has a creation date of March 1997, making it over 17 years old. A screenshot (again, NSFW!) shows that Quizzer.com appears to have been adult-themed for several years.
Although the Qzzr branding is certainly unique, it has the potential to be confusing for people who learn about the website via word of mouth. Yes, I would suspect that most of the traffic will come via social media channels and partner marketing given the viral nature of quizzes and quiz websites, but there will likely be some traffic leakage to the other website given how Qzzr appears to sound.
As always, your thoughts are welcome.
*Update on 9/26:
This afternoon, I learned that Qzzr smartly acquired the Quizzer.com. According to Qzzr’s Owen Fuller, “The quizzer.com domain acquisition was already in the works when the press hit. We agree that it was important to lock it down. We were happy to be able to purchase it for a reasonable price, and I think the previous owner was happy with the outcome too.“
It will be totally confusing. It makes no sense to launch a new brand that will be so confusing when it comes to spelling. And in this particular case, where people looking for their site will surely often end up at quizzer.com, which is an adult site, then it’s a real big mistake. They’d need more than the entire 2 million dollars they raised to create the kind of brand awareness to fix this problem.
Eh I don’t think it’s that huge of an issue. How often do you type out a full domain into a browser, no link, no google search no history assistance? I think it’s a problem but not nearly as big as Jeff is making it sound.
“Hey Mom, check out Qzzr.com when you have a chance.”
I am sure my Mom would visit Quizzer.com if I didn’t spell it out for her.
It would be nice to have the full domain, but they’re obviously content with building a brand from scratch. Agree with Brandon, my guess is that this site will not me ‘made or broken’ by literal word of mouth (and when it is shared, I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard to spell out the four letters and explain it, I know I would at least) — but instead success will hinge on social sharing in the digital realm. This in turn will drive domain / brand awareness because it’s a catchy, short four letter domain. Props to them in my book.
Qzzr started out on a .CO extension so it’s nice to see them on a dot com now. Quizzer isn’t even a real word so from a branding standpoint Qzzr is much more memorable especially for their target market. Who cares if a very small amount of word of mouth traffic leaks to another site. These tech companies are built through social media so spelling matters very little. Being memorable is more important than grammar.
Word of mouth is still a very important part of our life. Better invent a name that is not confusing. Why not make it easy for our consumers to remember?
I think not everybody will be able to read Qzzr as Quizzer and most will fail to answer the first question – “what is the spelling of Quizzer?”. Qzzr or Quizzer! Still, it may do well.
I think it’s a terrific domain, but I think the nature of the other one makes it an iffy proposition. Think about a commute and hearing that domain on a radio ad. As Elliot says, hearing the domain without seeing it, will naturally be confusing. and with the current use of quizzer.com, it opens up a can of worms. I would think with a $2M seed infusion, they would have buttoned that down before they publicly addressed their intentions.
good news to Qzzr to get a domain name Quizzer.com
The way things are heading they can just hold out for Quizzer.qzzr
All in good time. 😉 Check out quizzer.com today.
Very good move, Owen. That will pay off for you big time. Good luck with the new venture.