Protect and Survive

Or why you're suddenly staring at a load of dancing letters at the top of the page!

I've cribbed a lot of this from Steve's message in the support space, so don't be surprised if some of this look familiar.

First of all, apologies that we weren't able to announce this change in name beforehand – in hindsight we probably should have done. Our only excuse is that we've been so busy this week with all the changes required we missed a few things…

The main reason for the change is to do with the word 'mail'. As you know, our service does much more than just simple mailing lists but the feedback was that people thought we were only about e-mail. When going out and talking to journalists and investors we also found that the name MailSpaces put us at a disadvantage – e-mail is no longer new or interesting to them which made it harder for us to get their attention.

This is why I have called this entry "protect and survive".  We took over a lot of people from SmartGroups last year, and I said to all of them that I would do everything I could to maintain a decent service for them.  And it is my intention to continue to do that. 

We are a business, and rely upon advertising revenue to survive.  To do this, we need to continue to grow our user base, and to attract the attentions of the "Web 2.0" community.  While we expect our user base will continue to come from all walks of life, there is a real need in today's market place to be identified as part of the new web phenomenon (which we are, naturally), and to get a buzz going there.

Hence our adoption of more of a buzzy feel.  Out with any references to mail (and it is only one of our content introduction and delivery mechanisms, after all), and the adoption of a name that gives away some more of what we do (think jigsaws and glue (and eskimos...)).  It's not easy finding something that's short, not taken, and is not too rude in other parts of the world...

We like it, so much so that Steve is having T shirts printed.  We hope that if you don't like it yet, at least you will forgive us in time.