What NOT to name your product or company.

We're continually amazed that people trademark names that are spelled differently than they sound. In today's word-of-mouth world, what you hear is what you type in your browser, so it's imperative that your name is easy and intuitive to spell. Case in point: Takkle.com, a high school sports website. When Jeff says, "Yo Steve, check out Takkle.com," Steve hears "tackle" and when he types it in his browser, he lands at Bass Pro, a fishing tackle website. So Takkle loses a customer and Steve thinks Jeff is a dork. During a panel discussion at the recent MashUp teen marketing conference, Alexandra asked Takkle CEO David Birnbaum if, in hindsight, he would have chosen a name that was easier to spell. He said he would stick with Takkle. Proving Alexandra's point, RockYou.com founder Lance Tokuda jumped in and said that RockYou loses thousands of customers a day who type in "rocku." We wonder how often the Takkle guy has to say "that's Takkle with two K's," when he isn't sporting a Takkle baseball cap that he can point to.