@SIABIZ

Dotcom Name Game

By Connie Ling

Issue cover-dated May 17, 2001

STEPHEN YAP frowns at the mention of the word "dotcom." "It's just a URL, an address of a Web site," says Yap, who is the marketing director of Interactive Audience Measurement Asia, or iamasia, which measures the size, composition and trends of Internet usage. While its business depends very much on the Internet industry, iamasia doesn't want to be associated with dotcoms.

The aversion is so powerful that iamasia executives decided against including the name of the company's office building on their business cards when they set up shop late last year in Dotcom House. At the time this was a popular nest in Hong Kong's Central district for many Internet start-ups: "It was a conscious decision not to put the name on the cards," Yap says.

Iamasia is not alone in distancing itself from the once high-flying world of dotcoms. For a company to have a ".com" at the end of its name, or an "i-" or "e-" prefix, was once a sure path to investors' hearts--and chequebooks. At the height of the Internet frenzy in 1999 and 2000 dozens of companies across Asia renamed themselves that way. But this is no longer the case. A year after the hi-tech benchmark Nasdaq dramatically slumped in the United States, companies of the New Economy are seeking to change their dotcom monikers, and make their identities less Web-centric.

Last month, Hong Kong-based Web Connection, the six-year-old Internet consultancy owned by Nasdaq-listed Chinadotcom, changed its name to Ion Global. Its president, Steve McKay, says the new name makes the consulting firm sound less like an "upstart Web-site design house."

That was also a concern for Jen-ran Chen, chief executive officer of Yam Digital Technology, which runs one of Taiwan's largest portals, yam.com. "We had a big debate internally [in 1999] about whether to add '.com' to our company name, because everyone else seemed to be doing it," Chen recalls. "In hindsight, it was a very good move not to."

You can also say goodbye to the catchy company names so beloved of young start-up companies. Sausage Software, an Australian Internet consultant and software designer, is changing its name in favour of something new that will encourage investors to take the company more seriously. It has yet to decide what to change its name to, but Sausage needs as much help as it can get, if its share price is any indication. Listed on the Australian Stock Exchange, its shares have plummeted with the fall of the technology sector in the past year. From a peak of around A$8 ($4) in March last year, Sausage's shares are now trading at around 50 Australian cents.

Naseem Javed, president of U.S.-based ABC Namebank International, long ago warned Asian companies that it was short-sighted to add a ".com" or an "e-" or "cyber" to their name unless it gave potential customers an honest indication of what their business was.

DEJA VU

And now with the dotcoms' fall from grace, companies are once again changing with the times: "Gone are all the booboo.com, googoo and foofoo names," says Javed, whose company specializes in naming companies and products.

Investors seem intent on rewarding those companies that are walking away from the dotcom label. Take U.S.-based, Nasdaq-listed, on-line publishing company Internet.com, for example. When it announced in April that it would rename itself INTMedia Group, its share price immediately jumped to more than $4, after spending much of the previous month trading at less than $3. That's still a long way from a high of more than $70 at the end of last year.

But Javed isn't feeling triumphant. He says the current anti-dotcom sentiment among many Internet-related companies is just as short-sighted: "It's the same stupidity" that drove companies to rename themselves as dotcoms one or two years ago, he contends, adding: "The Internet is not dead--dotcom is not dead."

I-BRIEFS

United States-based PC giant Compaq Computer expects continued high growth this year from India, where its revenues grew 49% in the first quarter of this year.

Despite cutting 5,000 U.S. jobs earlier this year, chipmaker Intel says it is continuing to hire around the world, especially in India and other parts of Asia.

ACNielsen eRatings.com reports South Koreans were the world's most avid Internet surfers in March, but they spend only 28 seconds viewing each page.

Taiwan's Compal Communication is working with Motorola to develop wireless handsets that will be shipped in the fourth quarter of this year, mostly to China.

Japan's Matsushita Electrical Industrial Co. expects exports from its Thai unit to more than double to $419 million in the next three years, as it shifts more production of consumer electronics from Osaka to Thailand.