That seems like a very weird branding move to me (dropping the part of your brand name that actually makes it recognizable), but I guess I just don't understand the marketing 4D chess at play here.
Is this some kind of marketing flex? "We are so recognizable, we can afford drop the only thing from our name that makes it make object level sense"?
Other examples: Transferwise -> Wise (despite them still doing transfers as their main business), WeWork -> We (ok, to be fair in my experience not so much work got done there at the best of times) etc.
These things also usually completely kill SEO. Like, how am I supposed to google for the nearest coworking space? "we near me" sounds ridiculous to type into a search engine.
Transferwise makes sense to me. They used to be just about transferring money abroad. By now, they offer full bank accounts including card payments. I guess they dropped the transfer to make people aware that they’re a proper bank now.
This seems more like a story people like to repeat than an actual reality, like we're just relaying wisdom from 1999.
However, chat.com is blocked on my work computer as pornography.
Do you happen to be in France?
No, the company I work for has some presence in France (and every other country) though.
> dropping the part of your brand name that actually makes it recognizable
This feels a lot like Twitter -> X, I guess we have to get used to this.
Twitter -> X is such a terrible rebrand even Elon Musk doesn't use it consistently.
I don't get why he didn't rebrand it as "twitter on X", X encompassing the chatbot, job search, group voice calls, etc and "twitter" being an "app" on X
because then the press wound still refer to it as twitter.
who calls alphabet alphabet? meta ended up slightly better only because they had three or four really strong consumer brands.
>who calls alphabet alphabet?
Not the same as Alphabet is the parent company and media do call it so when the parent company is fined for example. Same for Meta. Also, the press does write "X" or "X (formerly Twitter").
I replied to a comment suggesting X be a parent company to Twitter.
I don't call alphabet anything because I don't talk about alphabet. Google is a subsidiary within alphabet.
I replied to a comment recommending Twitter be a subsidiary of X.
It’s because X was supposed to become a one app to rule them all like WeChat in China, and that obviously never happened (maybe because he fired everyone?), instead X is just Elon’s personal Twitter.
It's sad but it might eventually. I would imagine to the end of Trump cadence we'll be paying with x-coin in supermarkets, both he and Elon will be making tons of money. Trumps and Elons x-coin will have tariffs built in to it and you won't be paying taxes if you use it /s
He jumps consistently in an X shape every time he makes a public speech though. He is pretty… important about the X.
also openai is moving to a post gpt world
They didn't change anything; chatgpt.com is still the main domain. chat.com simply redirects to chatgpt.com.
Good point, although chatgpt.com used to redirect to chat.openai.com for a while too, until the former eventually became the default.
I have four different apps on my phone all called "Messenger".
There must something about companies wanting their customers think that they don't need to use the competition.
I have a similar "huh?" rxn to HBO rebranding as "Max". At first I thought someone in my family had signed up for CineMax. I still call it HBO.
There never was a digital service called HBO.
There was HBO Go and HBO Now, one of which you could subscribe to yourself, the other of which was an option you could get through your cable provider. There was massive amounts of confusion about the entire situation.
HBO Max was combining the two apps into a single digital streaming platform.
But then to drop the HBO out of "HBO Max" is certainly a decision.
Yes there was, just not in America
How did you forgot x.com, the biggest flex and disaster at the same time.
I guess short words are cooler and more expensive. Like Facebook starting as www.thefacebook.com and then getting facebook.com later. Not sure how meta.com is working out for them though. I guess the stock is up.
Meta is a company though, not (primarily) a brand. People don't need to google or remember "Meta"; they'll search for "WhatsApp", "Instagram" etc. (In fact, I suspect that getting as far away in semantic space from Facebook with these other properties was part of the motivation for the rename.)
If OpenAI renamed itself to just "AI" I'd sigh and shrug (and applaud the honesty), but ChatGPT is a product and well-known brand name.
FB rebranded to Meta and obfuscated that they are behind those apps, it worked, most users still have no idea that Meta is FB
This was just Justin Timberlake's idea, right.
I always assumed something like ChatGPT is artificially boosted by Google... do they really have people doing SEO?
Why would Google artificially boost it? They're competing. They shouldn't give it any special treatment whatsoever
Are they? Have you tried Gemini lately? They might be competing on the services side, but the only two peer competitors in the chatbot space are Anthropic and OpenAI.
They do have a chat ui. It's not as robust afaik, but I don't see why they can't expand on it. It would be a nice addition to their storage/Google one offering
Are you suggesting that chatgpt is as popular as it is because it's propped up by google in the serps?
I think they're suggesting that highly popular sites like ChatGPT get a ranking boost beyond regular page rank, making SEO efforts unnecessary.
But I don’t think that’s the case, at least not artificially. These sites tend to rise naturally in search rankings because they have a huge volume of links and media coverage. Which still makes SEO efforts unnecessary.
they are taking a common lingo (i.e. chat) and making a brand out of it. Could be a genius move.
Usually brands make the conscious effort to avoid that, because they might lose their trademark.
Good luck defending any trademark, though.
Could be.
Me: I will ask ChatGpt… changed to “I will ask Chat”
So Mom: Who is Chat? Me: Gpt.
They could buy Chad.com as well, then it would make sense /s
They could also be banking on the emergence of "chat" as an imaginary external party to a conversation which apparently has started becoming a thing with _the youths_
- Chat, is this real?
- GPT, Being intentionally obtuse: Nah dude, chill
I still think Cortana was the best naming/branding. It's sufficiently unique, has a fun history, probably has enough syllables for voice activation, is an actual name that doesn't sound dumb to call an entity. Too bad MS squandered it.
They should probably buy skibidi.com
Also Golang to Go
Golang and Go coexisted since the beginning. Go was the favorite name but Golang was used in parallel to make search possible
Every time I go to chatgpt.com I type chat into the address bar and it autocompletes to the correct site. Also when talking to my coworkers it's taken the same status as "googling" something. We just call it "chat". So yes, I also feel it's odd to see chat.com go to chatgpt but it's the shorthand some people are already using.
Examples of what my coworkers and I say at the office:
"What does chat have to say about x?"
"Did you ask chat"
"Did chat find the answer?"
"Yeah, chat scripted that one."I’ve literally never heard anyone refer to chatgpt as “chat”. In fact, I don’t believe your anecdote.
My coworkers also watch a lot of twitch so chat was already something they said before.
It's for sure something I say...
And it's why better than someone calling it chat gip-uh-dee (pronounced with a J sound like GIF :) )
Jippity sounds dumb but it's growing on me. I wonder if that domain is still available... No, registered in 2023
I just call it "cat".
If someone talks about "chat" I assume they're talking about a livestream's chat feed, or the other members of a group message channel.
Yeah, me too. And if you squint your eyes and tilt your head you can kind of make the connection. Any large Language Model is made of the "chat" from billions of messages floating around on the internet.
So when you ask chat a question you are in reality asking an algorithmic simulation of mass internet communication.
In my mind the connection works, which is convenient with the new chat.com domain and all...
Kind of funny, because there's another product we use that's just called Chat, so we'd never say that. "GPT" is a better shorthand IMO. It's also not specific but I don't know of any other product that uses it in the branding.
Chat is that real?
Apparently this used to be adult webcam service with up to 16 way webcams: https://web.archive.org/web/20221203160549/https://www.chat....
Someone who has't been visiting the site for a while will be very disappointed, ChatGPT does only text, voice and images
May be they will just think that the UI is updated and start sexting with chatgpt
Then get schooled for not abiding to the SV morals
I kinda feel like the sort of kiki weird odd name of chatgpt helped it gain traction. People care way less about pleasurable brand names than marketing people think. Just 'chat' is way too generic etc (sounds like many unoriginal SF companies)
I agree. WhatsApp is by far the most popular app in Brazil (of all kinds, not only messengers). Yet…
- Its name is unpronounceable for 90% of its users (we short it to ”zap”)
- The word itself has unfamiliar letter combinations (“wh” and “pp”).
- The intended pun doesn’t work at all, since no one here uses “What’s up” (not even the 10% that understands English)
Similar to what happens with “Google” and “Facebook”, btw.
I'm a native English speaker and I didn't get the "pun" for years. Almost a decade, even.
"App" does not rhyme with "Up".
> "App" does not rhyme with "Up".
It does if you're from Boston.
But if you had heard people saying it like this for years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJmqCKtJnxM
Sure, but there are countries where the accent of people speaking English makes the pun very obvious. I wonder if the original WhatsApp people were foreigners.
Same, and I just figured it out NOW. And I use it every day....
> - The intended pun doesn’t work at all, since no one here uses “What’s up” (not even the 10% that understands English)
Well until you wrote this I never realized it was supposed to be a pun, and I'm a native English speaker...
All those super generic .COMs always make me think "probably a domain squatter". Easy to remember though I guess.
ChatGPT is an amazing name. Extremely percussive.
An sizeable number of people get confused and call it "ChatGTP": enough that you can search "ChatGTP" and find pages of posts and articles misnaming it
An initialism is not exactly an amazing name for a consumer product.
It is a great word spoken. Written it is visually identifiable as a symbol. It also seems to break every rule of naming, and is almost nonsensical.
ChatBLT would’ve been more honest.
How do you pronounce it? G as in Gif or G as in jpeg? Chat-gee-pee-tee? Chat-guh-pt? Chat-Gipity?
I like to use both gee-pee-tee and the Primeagen style "chat jippity" interchangeably, depending on who I'm talking to.
Hard G in GIF as in Graphics (which is what it stands for),
Soft G in GPT as in Generative (which is what it stands for)... Simple.
You might get away with "Gippity" in some contexts.
chat is basically prepping us for the future where the only “thing” we will chatting with is “AI” :)
ChatGPT's name was always an albatross: OpenAI didn't expect the original ChatGPT research demo in November 2022 to go as megaviral as it did, but once it did it was too late to give it a more business-friendly name.
It wouldn't surprise me if they eventually rebrand ChatGPT to just Chat, Justin-Timberlake-style.
I think it reached "so bad it's good" status. If they had launched with a more typical silicon valley name like Gemini then I don't think it would have become the generic term for a chatbot among non-tech people.
I've been working at public libraries and I hear young people say "ChatGPT" several times per hour.
Most people have no idea what GPT means or what GPT products existed before ChatGPT. But that means those 3 letters occupy their own space in their head and that space is the same as "AI chatbot". That gives OpenAI a lot of power that Anthropic won't have with "Claude" or Google with "Gemini".
Wasn't OpenAIs bid to trademark "GPT" rejected though? That name isn't a moat if anyone can use it.
It was rejected but it doesn't mean people can't assume GPT means chatgpt
Obviously a legally protected name is best. But "GPT" will end up morally protected even without legal protection.
"This AI is dumb. Bob, did you get all this research from a fake ChatGPT cos you're too cheap to buy the real thing?"
A new name for a new thing.
I'm just happy OpenAI hasn't gone through a half dozen rebrandings like Google has with Assistant / PaLM / Sparrow / Bard / Gemini
But then it won't be Search.com
It looks like Chat.com is just redirecting to ChatGPT.com and hasn't replaced the brand name (yet.)
If the intention is to rebrand as Chat.com / Chat, the interesting question is whether this commits them to the chatbot-based model of using AI tools. Personally, I think that is something of a mistake – the chat model is fine for now, but it requires too much pre-knowledge to use effectively. The most effective AI tools I've used have more elaborate UIs that help "corral" the created material into more usable formats.
The human word "Chat" seems too generic to be a good brand name too. I think it would be a dumb move to rebrand right now.
While I quite like it, I see if I google "chat" the top result is Google Chat.
The French would claim it’s a feline word ;-)
Reminiscent of "Wired" magazine, in the era of wireless / mobile taking over.
Misleading? chat.com redirects to chatgpt.com, and chat.com is registered at GoDaddy while chatgpt.com is registered at Markmonitor.
Redirection is dirty quick thing they might have done in the meantime they switch all other APIs or make sure nothing breaks.
If they're moving to drop GPT, I'll miss "chat gippity". I don't think I'll stop referring to OpenAI's chat solutions as that, no matter what they call it.
"What does the SEC do?"
"Securities market stuff? I'm not sure, you should ask gippity"
Feels a bit like Twitter.com versus x.com
I didn’t like ChatGPT as a product name and I still don’t but it’s established,recognized,distinctive and SEO friendly.
Why would you trade all that fir something else?
Who negotiates these large domain acquisition deals?
I imagine that without a professional negotiator in the process many domain owners would easily leave lots of money on the table.
Does anyone know who owned chat.com before?
That can't have been cheap.
It was an adult "chat" site: https://web.archive.org/web/20230101040501/https://www.chat.... (NSFW)
Though it looks like they were already trying to sell the domain: https://web.archive.org/web/20221208222423/https://www.chat....
Historically, it was owned by CNet's download.com (remember that?) and it redirected to their chat apps category.
Huh, I wonder how many adult content filters that domain is still on. That might be an impediment to them making it the primary domain in the short term.
This recently featured article comes to mind → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41951131.
Ah that's why it's blacklisted on my corporate network
they should autopaste "talk dirty to me" prompt for everyone redirected from it
Anonymous, but prior to that it was Dharmesh from Hubspot https://domainnamewire.com/2023/05/25/chat-com-sells-for-8-f...
OpenAI was the anonymous buyer: https://x.com/dharmesh/status/1854307883304792294
Copy & paste for those who can't visit Twitter:
> BREAKING NEWS: Secret acquirer of $15+ million domain chat .com revealed and it's exactly who you'd think.
> For those of you that have been following me for a while, you may recall that I announced earlier this year that I had acquired the domain chat .com for an "8 figure sum" (which was later reported as being $15.5M).
> I also shared that I had sold the domain to an undisclosed buyer.
> I was not at liberty to share who the acquirer was (I was going to leave that to them, when they were ready).
> Well, in a 8 character tweet (talk about brevity), Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI revealed that they were the buyer. If you visit the website now, it goes to ChatGPT.
"Some" cash + mucho shares in overinflated company?
$15M, apparently.
Awesome. OpenAI will eat this market.
Called it a couple weeks ago → https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41884821.
Some still think "OpenAI has no moat", keep on beating that horse, lol.
If openAi wants to eat the market they must buy chrome's omnibar
What is their moat besides incredibly deep war chests?
It’s the same for all foundation model companies. The moat is how much money that have to sell inference and pay for training.
ChatGPT is more than a foundation model. To use Claude as an example of where competitors are failing in comparison, you can't even do extremely basic stuff like upload PowerPoint decks or Excel spreadsheets, much less create custom GPTs.
Sure, but none of that is moat. It’s just a feature on someone’s backlog.
The proof of that is chatgpt itself. OpenAI did not pioneer a lot of those kinds of features. They saw startups doing it and just did it themselves since it’s fairly straightforward to implement.
A scrappy startup can copy the vast majority of chatgpt features with another foundation model.
Custom GPTs are just prompts.
>A scrappy startup can copy the vast majority of chatgpt features with another foundation model.
Software is expensive to build, adoption is more expensive. If you ever try to convince someone to migrate in a B2B setting - you'll learn that its not enough to be cheaper, or better - you need to either be 10x cheaper or provide a next level experience that makes the existing product seem like a liability.
If you could copy ChatGPT's functionality (getting more expensive by the day), and offer it for $2/month - then folks might migrate. Otherwise the switching cost is too high for most.
> If you could copy ChatGPT's functionality (getting more expensive by the day)
You can. You can also make the core functionality of Twitter in a weekend.
Building software at this high a level isn’t too expensive or difficult, especially since the LLM provider you’d use handles the most difficult scaling issues for you.
> and offer it for $2/month
This you can’t really do. OpenAI can’t either tbf, they just have the runway to charge whatever they feel like… that cash is their moat.
> Sure, but none of that is moat.
Not for foundation models, and not when considered individually. But as long as OpenAI continues killing it with foundation models, continues moving up the stack with applications built on those models, and continues establishing market-leading parterships/integrations with companies like Microsoft and Apple, that's a moat.
That’s…not a moat. Here, I’ll let chatgpt tell you:
True moats often involve factors like network effects, brand strength, intellectual property, or significant operational efficiencies that are harder to replicate.
The Superman analogy is fun, but moats are rarely that simple. About the real-world scenario I described, ChatGPT generated:
"The combination of OpenAI’s advancements in foundation models, application development, and strategic partnerships collectively creates a robust moat for several reasons: [list of reasons]
"Together, these elements form a substantial moat. OpenAI’s cutting-edge models create a technological barrier, its applications generate a sticky user base, and its partnerships expand its influence and operational support, making it difficult for competitors to replicate its entire ecosystem. This combination of technological, user-based, and strategic advantages creates a robust, multi-layered moat around OpenAI in the competitive AI landscape."
I use it for some reports every month and Claude is so much better than OpenAI's frontier models it's not even funny.
I can upload CSV, JSON, PDF, any type of text file...
> you can't even do extremely basic stuff like upload PowerPoint decks or Excel spreadsheets
That's a UX implementation, not a moat. There's nothing ChatGPT-specific about vector stores/the Assistants API that Claude can't copy if there's enough demand.
Good UX is a moat. Otherwise we'd be in the year of the Linux desktop.
An operating system is indeed a moat because a user can't easily switch operating systems due to the ecosystem it extends. That's not a UX thing.
Yeah, you're right.
They'll be out of business very soon!
/s
I never once suggested that…
You can stay in business for a long time with no moat and billions of dollars.
Long enough to find a moat even.
not sure about reducing it to just chat but using the entire "chat gpt" as a verb is really common like "let me chatgpt this assignment" (love it or hate it is very common in schools)
They already have something like 80% of the gen ai revenue
But they're still not making a profit. Maybe the analogy would be if the moat was filled with water, and it started leaking into the castle.
Their goal isnt revenue, they can turn ads on and turn into google. the goal is growth
It seems like they already own 80% of the market, and have hundreds of millions of users. They became a for-profit company, so hopefully their goal is going to be profit eventually.
I wonder whether running an ad on a ChatGPT conversation even pays for the cost of that conversation. I know the agent my company runs costs us 10x more to generate each response than an ad click would bring us in revenue. So, even if someone clicked on an ad every time they asked a question, we'd still lose money. Hmm.
Honestly right now Anthropic offer a better service, at least if you are a programmer, I don't really see the moat.
I find it funny to think that SnapChat did the opposite and removed Chat to become Snap.
Either way it’s a bold move. It’s clearly easier to type and say. I wonder if they found GPT is just too unpleasant to say so trying to switch the brand is worth it to them.
Current post title:
ChatGPT now on chat.com
I think a more accurate title may be:
chat.com now redirects to chatgpt.com
I am not a marketing guy, however feels like this is an unnecessary move.
Haven't they already have the "Xerox" brand/verb of LLM Chat bots?
What if it’s not about marketing & more about new functionality? In another comment this was compared to Twitter changing to X … what if this is ChatGPT becoming a chat app for peers & with gpt? Or a social network? People share their GPT chats so maybe they want to be the chat platform… sound too bold? They did search.
> An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the acquisition via email.
Haha can't wait until new people think that everything that has a chat also has AI because chat.com is AI
Clicking the link opens the Ticketmaster app on my phone.
Bad marketing move. This dilutes the brand.
They just bought the domain, similar to what Google does with gogle.com.
Except Google didn't announce the introduction of gogle.com and other misspellings.
Based on the reaction, the co had other plans for it and now backpedaling ("it's just a redirect!")
Has there been an official announcement regarding chat.com? The submitted title says ChatGPT is on chat.com but currently is just a redirect to good 'ol chatgpt.com.
By announcing you mean a tweet from Sam saying "chat.com"?
Yes. Also, I am pretty sure google did not pay $15M for gogle.com.
I feel it's not the same.
all their product people are now posting about it on LinkedIn.
This is more likely just to help with incomplete/mistyped urls. As in gogle.com -> google.com
ai.com has historically redirected to chatgpt, then grok, then google gemini and now chatgpt again
This is going to wreck Goldman's next analysis.
(context: https://the-decoder.com/goldman-sachs-blunder-adds-to-ai-sto...)
"Drop the 'gpt'. Just 'Chat'. It's cleaner"
Why, ChatGPT is a verb now
I'm all for cleaner, but "Just use chat" really does not confer the same intent.
good point. counterpoint: it'll catch on with more users in the general public with a shorter, easier name. gpt has to be repeated a few times or possible to make mistakes. gtp? gpd?
But it’s not a chat service…
hi
Meanwhile, chattyg.com is taken, but doesn't point to anything.
You can take the boy out of silicon valley venture-backed web startups, but you can't take the silicon valley venture-backed web startups out of the boy
I mean I know what domain I'm telling my parents to visit and it isn't chat.openai.com or chatgpt.com. Don't think they need to rebrand but it's a good enough shortcut
essay fo
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