Swear An Oath, and Other Things To Do With New AOL/Yahoo Brand
Verizon has been spewing lots of news these days:
- A huge reorganization that puts Marni Walden atop the "media and telematics" division;
- Reports of a possible skinny bundle offering to compete with those from AT&T, YouTube and several others;
- Continued revamping of the GO90 service, using the tech team behind Vessel, the beautiful and innovative but also expensive and failed subscription video-on-demand site;
- A new name for the merged AOL/Huffington Post/Yahoo operations once that deal closes, perhaps before an April 24 deadline.
That last, a new name for these media operations, will be Oath, according to a Twitter post by AOL President Tim Armstrong. This, of course, spurs thoughts of what else one could rename at Verizon/AOL/Yahoo/GO90/Oath. Accordingly, some suggestions:
- Oath. Oath! As in, what you were swearing at Yahoo after it allowed a 500-million name security breach, which happened more than a year before it cut the deal with Verizon and didn't tell anyone about, including, ahem, Verizon. Also, what happened when Yahoo had a second, even bigger security breach while the negotiations were largely done. I'm guessing (hoping) that former Ericsson CEO Hans Vestberg, who will head Verizon's new network and technology team, won't be keeping a lot of the information-security unit on board.
- As it is, many have already sworn an Oath to never use the site's many products again, so if the name goes away (as seems possible, or even likely), will we all yell "Yahoo!" in celebration? Maybe some people would prefer to call the renamed unit NOath, as in "No, I'm not using Oath because I've seen my spam and security problems skyrocket."
- What happens if Verizon decides to get into the music-video business more aggressively? Having done so, would it hire someone who really knows how to push the technology envelope with music and video? Would they perhaps look to a really smart band that makes great m
usic and has an entire behind-the-scenes team dedicated to making ground-breaking imagery? If they hired that band, should Verizon rename its mobile video site OK G090? Given that the inventive videos created by OK Go may have individually attracted more viewers than the entire GO90 site over months of time, this idea holds some promise. - Given the team that is doing the GO90 revamp, until it's up and working and actually drawing traffic, can we just call Verizon's mobile site Broken Vessel?
- If Verizon doubles down on content acquisition by adding a recently renamed chain of newspapers and digital sites that includes the Los Angeles Times, would getting betrothed to Tronc mean a new, new name like... Troath?
- If Marni Walden makes a deal to acquire Phil Anschutz's movie production company, the same one that made the "Chronicles of Narnia" movies among other Christian-/family-themed entertainment, would she rename the company Marni Walden Media?
- That new skinny bundle that's almost certainly coming soon from Verizon? I got nothin'. No idea what they're going to call it, or what they should call it. Any suggestions out there? Clearly, Verizon could use the help as much as I could.
