Some companies just don’t know when it’s time to rebrand - Like Netscape. They recently relaunched themselves as a Digg clone and the response has been rather bleak. Now I know the AOL suits think that Netscape is a household word and think they can leverage that - but not when it’s a household word for “lost to Microsoft and vanished into the ether”. And especially not when you’re trying to target the Digg demographic, which can smell lame from a mile away and is merciless to anyone who tries to be “cool and with it” on behalf of a major company like AOL.

It’s a little like Wal-mart trying to go up against MySpace. If your brand is the epitome of uncool, there’s no way to pull it out of its misery.

Take a look at Song - Delta’s little stepchild. It did so well that is started to cannibalize its own family (Delta) - but for the average consumer Song was a fresh new service with a fresh new face - that’s why it did so well.

Microsoft is getting poised to make a big move into the personal music player market with a new family of devices, under the the name Zune. It’s a direct challenge to Apple and the iTunes stronghold.

My reaction? See my Lame 2.0 post. Once again, the MSN brand is uncool - a multimillion dollar marketing effort could not convince the world to switch away from Google last year - their search was still way better. Unless this thing does something WAYYYY above and beyond what the ipod is capable of and is a REALLY sexy unit (hard to beat the ipod), Zune will be yet another failed MSN project.

Wetpaint is a new wiki platform that just came out of Beta. I remember reading the hype about it in March and also reading the follow up post on Threadwatch a few days later entitled “WetPaint new on Friday, Old by Sunday”. I signed up to be a beta tester and got an invite, but after a careful review, I gave it a big thumbs down.

The company has secured an impressive 5M in funding, but I just don’t see where that money is going - maybe 3 SuperBowl ads in 2007? The biggest problems: interface and motivation.

I’ll give the service an honorable mention for trying to create a slick ajax interface, but the end result is quite clunky and not very intuitive. If they are trying to bring the wiki to the masses, it won’t be able to do it with what it has. Seems like a product of “engineering trees, not the forest”.

Second is the motivation factor, which I think is the reason this company might fail. Squidoo has been criticized for this same reason, but at least it has Seth behind it AND it offers some kind of revenue share (even if it is laughable). If I am going to spend my time creating a wiki and putting in the hours, what will I get in return? To quote my conversation with Pete Cashmore of Mashable, “What’s the motivation factor?”. Any web2.0 company that’s trying to make it through the breaks needs to answer this question on behalf of its users, “What’s in it for me?”. Whether that’s “I’ll save time” (Digg), “I’ll be organized” (Digg again), “I’ll make money” (Blogger/Adsense), or “I’ll get recognition and exposure” (Wikipedia). Wetpaint? None of the above.