YouSendIt is now Hightail.
Yousendit.com, the file transfer service that I wrote about in the last post, has changed its name to Hightail. Why the name change? Hard to say. The service still works very well. The new branding is good. And the internet-based ads can be seen everywhere. But the video the company has on its website is cryptic at best in explaining WHY they changed the name.Mike Tripp, Hightail's Chief Marketing Officer, says in the video,"A lot of the names in this category are just boring and descriptive. There's a lot of clouds and boxes and syncs and shares and we wanted to get out of those descriptive names."
Okay, but what was wrong with Yousendit? It has no cloud, box, sync or share in it's name.Brad Garlinghouse, Hightail's CEO, says,"The name 'Yousendit' constrained us in terms of our vision for what the opportunity is ahead." But he doesn't go into much detail as to what those opportunities are.Hightail is an archaic term that means 'to move or travel fast'. There are other archaic terms such as skedaddle, scoot, vamoose or scram. Today, most of the internet is lightning fast, as opposed to what file transfer speeds were before the world wide web. Modems were painfully slow. DSL lines became faster and broadband picked up even more speed. But most of those archaic terms came way before the internet!"Yousendit" means, well, you-send-it. The "It" was whatever digital file you wanted to send. Which, when I think about it, is right on the money as a descriptor, Is Hightail faster than Yousendit? I didn't see any discernible difference, but I didn't run any tests, either.Matte Scheinker, the company's Chief Product Officer, states in the video,"There are so many factors in business that are working against you …the one thing you don't want working against you is your name. You want your name to help you. You want it to lift you. You want it to push you in the right direction. You want it to have the ability for you to put whatever meaning behind it you want."
What is the meaning, then, behind Hightail?It seems fairly certain that the company plans to place a lot of brand equity behind the new name. Mr. Garlinghouse says towards the end of the video,"For me, the opportunity for Hightail gives us an empty vessel in many ways to fill with all kinds of meaning about how we want to interact with our end-users. How we want to be known as a brand."My biggest pet peeve with the company is that the branding does not go far enough. Their website explains how their new Hightail mobile apps are available for download and can help your business. But when you download the Hightail for Mac desktop app, it installs what looks like the old Yousendit Mac desktop app. In fact, it still has the Yousendit logo on it. WTF?Again, I ask, what is the meaning behind Hightail?
Shaking the Magic 8 Ball reveals, "We'll let you know when we find out."Check it out:
