AirAsia.com announced on twitter a couple of days ago that they had managed to “get back” the name AirAsia and AirAsiadotcom is no more.

That got me wondering. Why did they say that? Did they start out with @AirAsia then somehow lost it so they had to work with @AirAsiadotcom until now? Whatever the story may be, I’m all for the shorter name and though it’s 50K followers and 2K tweets later, it’s never too late to change for the better. Good job Air Asia.

Why short is good:
1. It’s easier to remember. And let’s face it, who goes around calling Air Asia dot com by its full name? We naturally like shorter syllables that’s why we prefer KFC over Kentucky Fried Chicken.

2. Twitter has a limit of 140 characters and if you like your message retweeted, you have to drop it down to 120 characters. So the shorter your name, the more room the message gets.

3. It also shows a brand cares about making its customers’ lives easier. Here’s another thing about the word “cares”. When your name is @CompanyCares, I think you don’t really care that much.

Verbs attached to a brand name can be quite problematic. People can easily confuse “cares” with “care”. This may surprize you but it can look the same to a lot of people. Another word is “Comms”. I once tweeted @MaxisComm not knowing it was actually @MaxisComms. Needless to say, they never responded which made me even more upset.

When brands choose to go with names like that, they should monitor both names even though one doesn’t belong to them. That’s because the customer could get it wrong. If you’re not paying attention, you have lost a chance to engage.

One last thing about names. Choose a name that makes sense. If your brand is Sheraton Hotels and Resorts go with @Sheraton or @SheratonHotels or @Sheraton+country abbreviation, for example. My advice is to drop the “Resorts”. Don’t abbreviate it to “Res” which is also used by restaurants. Avoid confusion as much as you can.

We know choice names are hard to come by these days. Like, given a choice, I would prefer my twitter name to be @cc. Point is, so many brands could have picked better names on twitter. And if a brand really cares, it can show it by responding to customer problems quickly and not by spelling it out. Drop the word “cares”, keep the name short, meaningful and easy to remember.