PlaceBook will now be called Place’Book(pronounced Plaa-Kay-Book) after it was contacted by Facebook officials for similarity in the name. As Founder Rubin puts it,
“There’s an issue of whether this name infringes on another companies trademark, and whether it would dilute the value of theirs and/or potentially confuse the public. I have heard the arguments, and I have my opinions; I think this is a cool and unique name and would be distinct – I also feel it is an “apt descriptor” as they say, of what we are.”
Place’Book is a new way to approach travel online and the new site will look and work like any other book. Place’Book will make it easy for users to find places of interest and instantly book tickets for their trip.
Rubin has compared Place’Book to Myst, that has linking books and has no scroll bars and he feels is a nice way to browse online. There are different volumes amongst the Place’Book like the PhotoBook,TravelBook, FitnessBook that are connected to it.
As Places and Books makeup the major theme of the site, they felt PlaceBook was an appropriate name for it. They had no idea that Facebook would come knocking to their door. Though the url will remain the same, the pronounciation changes. But how many users will still say it PlaceBook instead of Place’Book remains to be seen. The company will soon launch an ad campaign to train the users to pronounce it Plaa-Kay-Book.
The site will roll out a beta version soon. You can register on placebook.com to get the first look and feel of the site when it is launched
Rubin explaining Place’book and the Name controversy.
{youtube}4AW3tYWtEn0{/youtube}
