Democracy Player changes name to 'Miro'

What's in a name? Lots of things, including the difference between confusing and creating potential users of your application, apparently. That's why the Participatory Culture Foundation is renaming Democracy Player, its open source internet television surfing program, despite sticking with the original name for over a year.

"Our early Mac beta versions of Democracy Player were called 'DTV'– we didn't think that we could be 'Democracy' until we had something substantial to offer... In all our debates about whether you could call something 'Democracy' and how people would react to the name, we hadn't realized that so many people would simply assume that the software was for politicians and videos about politics."

With that, the new name will be Miro, and a there's a lesson to be learned here in the meantime: if you've got a potentially creative, but ultimately too symbolic and image-burdened name for your software, think twice about it. You can't always expect casual users to look beyond the name of an application to see its real use. Anyway, check out the official word from the folks themselves to get the full lowdown.

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Source: http://www.getmiro.com/

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Multimedia Software Video Internet Open Source

What's in a name? Lots of things, including the difference between confusing and creating potential users of your application, apparently....

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Paul

Err, funny, in French (maybe slang) it means a person whose vision is extremely low.

Not really great for a television service.

Maybe they don't consider the French market as sufficiently substantial.

March 13 2007 at 6:39 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Marco F.

well.... Miro is already used by Pinnacle systems for their video cards... so I wonder if this is a smart move using an already registered name.

March 13 2007 at 3:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dan

So I have to log in AND confirm? Gracious!

Anyway, "miro" means, "I watch" in Spanish and benefits from the similarity to the word "mirror" which has visual connotations. (That similarity, of course, is not a coincidence)

The problem for me on Democracy Player, er.. Miro, is there's never anything I want to watch. I'm sure that will come in time.

March 12 2007 at 10:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Nick

Coincidence?

March 12 2007 at 7:06 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Nick

Miro is the name of the delinquent boy in the new movie Breaking and Entering.

March 12 2007 at 7:04 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Neven

Wow. The name Democracy was the only thing I thought didn't absolutely suck about the program.

March 12 2007 at 6:42 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Joshua Ochs

Of course, the web site doesn't seem to work yet - hmmm...