NEOS the new TYPO3 family member has a rough start. At first i was dumbfounded by the name. Then i said, well it could work. But after a few months of thinking, more and more I felt that the parents made fun of this poor kid when choosing the name (without consulting the community – supposedly this is what communities are for).
TYPO3 is a unique name and if you would search on a search engine after it, it was clear that you will get results related to TYPO3. NEOS is not a unique name by far. It is used for all kinds of things and if you search for it on Google you will get airlines, shoes, something called Neos Server (which is not related to TYPO3 Neos), libraries, companies and so on. TYPO3 Neos is only second from the bottom.
One could argue that we don’t need a unique name. I think we should have a unique name for a product like this. And i think most people in marketing would agree with me. Now there is a marketing team in TYPO3 but i don’t know where they were when this mistake was done in the first place.
It could even be suspected that no one even bothered to check the name on Google and see that there is a software product already called NEOS Server. Similarities like this should be avoided at all cost because they induce confusion among potential users.
Secondly, the installation process. Seriously ? Composer ? Editing apache.conf ? How complicated you want to do it ? Do you want to scare away everyone ? Did you look at similar products ?
I know that for us, working in the industry it should not be that hard, but for newbies its pretty hard to install it. And if you won’t have newbies you won’t have adoption. You won’t have people who work with this product. If you will not get enough people using it then you won’t have enough contributors to the code. And then you will need another 4-5 years to finish it.
You could stay in your bubble and be happy how wonderful product you have made. But having a product that no one except you and a few buddies use is pretty sad, no matter how wonderful the product is.
So I’m pretty pessimistic about the chances NEOS has to beat TYPO3, not even to speak about other similar products. I will continue to put my money on TYPO3.
Laszlo Bodor
1 comment
You’re partly right. I don’t have anything with the name. Regarding the features of the product, well that’s the main problem. It cannot even come close in terms of features to TYPO3 and all this after quite some years of develoment.