Missed opportunity to market Monkey.
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Missed opportunity to market Monkey.
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| The second Molyjam is this weekend, starting today at 7PM in your local time, and what I found interesting was what they recommend to use in the jam: Gamemaker, Construct, Unity... http://www.molyjam.com/news Seems it would have been a nice boost to the visibility of Monkey if someone had pushed a little to get on that list. Anyway, I'm considering doing a livestream on twitch.tv for the jam using Monkey. Not 100% because it comes down to some commitments I have this weekend to help out some friends and how much free time that leaves me, but I'm really hoping to make it work. Anyone else have plans to participate? |
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| The language is cool, but I've always hated the name. It simply isn't Googleable (I may have invented that word). The first result is a wikipedia page telling me what a monkey is. Then Monkey the TV series, Arctic Monkeys (band), then it all gets a bit hazy after that. But Monkey the language is nowhere to be seen. Type in Haxe, number one result. |
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| I agree to GfK. It's a pity.. You can google monkeycoder, but hey, who's doing that? ;) |
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| Yeah no one calls it monkeycoder, its called monkey, even googling monkeycoder you get tons of image results of a little code monkey thing. So many posts about this already tho I wont moan about it any more, Hay Red if you do let us know I would love to waste away a few hours just watching some one else work, Something I thought I would find boring but after watching the first Mojam I realized how insightful it can be. so yeah let us know. url ? twitter? |
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| "monkey programming" oh btw, this is why Google's language "go" is referred as "golang" |
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| The co.nz hurts the Google ranking too as it is county specific to New Zealand. It is penalized for more generic global use with Google because it's not seen as being used for anything other than NZ specific sites (afaik). A .com would be more suitable. It's a problem which can still be solved. If anyone wants to cooperate with picking and SEOing up a good .com for Monkey I'm game. This site should really be forwarding the monkeycoder.co.nz/* apex domain to the www. subdomain. Easy to do and makes the links more consistent. If https://www.cloudflare.com/ was used for the site then it would be very easy to setup and plus a static backup can be kept live even if the servers here go down. |
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| I'd agree with the name, its too common to easily find relevant stuff. Perhaps it needs an acronym like mgk or something a little more obscure. Gary |
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| The language is cool, but I've always hated the name. It simply isn't Googleable (I may have invented that word). The first result is a wikipedia page telling me what a monkey is. Then Monkey the TV series, Arctic Monkeys (band), then it all gets a bit hazy after that. But Monkey the language is nowhere to be seen. Type in Haxe, number one result. monkeycoder.co.nz turns up on the second page in the UK (when not signed into a Google account), which is not too bad considering the competition from the other monkeys. Actually, we get a lot of traffic from people searching for 'monkey'. Whether they are actually searching for us or the animal is unknown of course, but it goes to show we are not quite as hidden away as you might think. I agree a different domain name would help the site. Still hoping to persuade Mark to go with a different one when we launch the new site, although finding a good 'monkey' domain name that hasn't been taken is no easy task... |
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| I take it that BRL are completely opposed to a change of name, then? |
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| I just had a little play with google, and a domain name search tool and holy crap he was not kidding when he said finding a domain name related to monkey and code was hard. I was going to suggest getting people to help look for a good domain name but I really don't think there are any with the monkey name in it that would fit the bill, their all taken. Monkey was just such a silly name to pick I have no clue what Mark was thinking when he came up with it, it's got zero baring on the product that I can think of. I really think a full re-branding, new name, new top level .com domain would come with more benefits than pitfalls, it's not going to affect any of us because you can simply redirect this url to the new one. Which brings up a good question, in the 1 in a million chance that mark likes the idea, what the hell would he call it, what would people suggest monkey be called other than monkey, might it be an idea to invent a new word/name for the task.. Not sure if it's relevant but when I picked this Gamer Handle I invented it, google returned ZERO results on Taiphoz when I thought it up, it's based on a name given to an old Dragon and a few letters from something else personal to me, the Important thing is tho that it's Unique to me, 99% of search results returned by google will be me, or something by me, or about me, which cool. I think it would be amazing if Mark could come up with an appropriate name for monkey and the new domain name that he invents, with zero google search results, the second anyone searched for it, they would instantly find it, and it would be unlikely that he would ever face SEO clutter, other than from his fans talking about the product on other sites. just a thought. |
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| Monkey was just such a silly name to pick I have no clue what Mark was thinking when he came up with it I like to think that it's because of this. Though, it probably isn't:It can go anywhere, including Android, and iOS, and Win8. |
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| ROFL....... |
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| Myself I think the name "Monkey" for the language is less a problem than people think. But then I also have to admit to liking it since day one so I'm biased. At least I won't be against a change, but I remember when I programmed in BlitzBasic & BlitzMax, then I did avoid to mention those several times because of their names so I can understand if some have a similar feeling about the name Monkey. About domain names, I don't see it to be impossible to find some? Here are some I was aiming to use to create a community site, only reason I haven't is because I was afraid it would split the already small community. Some that are availible online: MonkeyCodeOnline.com MonkeyCodeSource.com YourMonkeyCode.com MonkeyCodeSpace.com AngryMonkeyCode.com MobileMonkeyCode.com MonkeyCodeForge.com CreativeMonkeyCode.com RobotMonkeyCode.com MonkeyProgramming.com MonkeyCoderOnline.com MonkeyCompile.com GameMonkeyCoder.com MonkeyGameCoder.com NewMonkeyGame.com MyMonkeyGame.com MyMonkeyCoder.com GameCoderOnline.com MonkeyGamePlay.com MonkeyGameGuide.com MonkeyGameCenter.com MonkeyGameConsole.com MonkeyGameRoom.com MonkeyGamePlan.com MonkeyGameServer.com MonkeyGameAcademy.com MonkeyCompiler.com PathOfTheMonkey.com MonkeyItIs.com Mojo related: mojomodule.com Feel free to use. |
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| The name Monkey is fine. The problem is SEO as all sites with monkey in the domain compete for space. Ideally one or more pages would be ranked to be first on Google globally for the term - wit good sales ages. Monkey a a name is a double edged sword. Currently more difficult to find sites relating to the language, but if they do end up ranking then it will mean more incidental traffic from people looking for the animal. I decided to get a domain yesterday and will work some to rank it with better sales copy. |
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| Renaming Monkey to Mojo gets my vote, The language is after all a little bit of dark magic the way it can export to other platforms and languages, a fitting name I think. Tibit I was actually planning something along the same lines, had a basic mock up running on my Wamp server some months ago, my intention at the time was to give people coding with the lite version some where to post and talk, but then that post came around where the talk of a new site redesign took place and I thought it would be better to bench the idea until I see what happens. I really hope they upgrade and open the forums up so that anyone can post. |
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| Taiphoz, do you know if a community overhaul is in progress or on a roadmap? Maybe doing something together would be a smart move otherwise? What do you think the cons & pros are? What did you start on? The current doc system can be integrated (& automatically updated) using a modified wordpress create page plugin, however I do like the current offline docs system - it became very readable and works very well as long as it contains the info you want. New users could get a better welcoming and sales page, but I think a even greater selling point from a new user perspective is seeing those 1,2,3 step do this guides - so they realize that the game that they want to do can easily be done*. *(Subjectively is why I bought BlizBasic once I had tested it. Without even having rudimentary programming knowledge at that time. I copied and pasted code snippets from the docs in order to get things done. I was way more productive then than I have been in Monkey lol) What I feel is of even greater need (for the current users & new) is a great need to be able to easily find & install frameworks, code snippets, targets, guides, solutions, and a Q & A section. A feature vote system is a matter of installing a plugin in wordpress, and should not take more than a few hours to setup. A new modern forum is also a quite simple task. |
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| Yes, they are doing a whole new website design, no real details as to what that includes tho, it's my hope that they will do a full redesign of the front side, using something like wordpress, and that they will then do a full new forum, a modern forum with bells and whistles, and I think most importantly , allowing non customers to post so that lite users can talk about it. What I had done initially was a themed wordpress install with a bridged PHPBB3 forum at the back, I had categories for the important stuff, BRL News, Developer News,New Releases,Spot Lights, all that sorta thing, I then setup links and pages to list those specific categories just like I have on my own site at the moment, although with a different theme. But as I said , no point in working on it as they may very well include these features in the redesign, well worth waiting to see what they come up with. For me, I have a few key bullet points that I will look for when its done, and if BRL cant hit them, I will probably look at starting something up again, because I feel their important area's that we really need, and if not here officially then some where else as a community site. For me its. - Full new front end. - New Modern Forum. - Ability for lite users to post. less important but still things I will be looking for are - Top Level Domain Name, .com,.net,.org - Better Domain name - Possibly a re-branding lol , I know , hell freezing over.. but still would be nice. |
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| Good to hear, have you heard about an ETA? |
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| Nah, nothing yet, should'nt take to long, I think their biggest fear forum wise is losing all the posts, to be honest it's not something I would worry about, they just need to archive this forum, lock it to prevent further posts and then shove it aside, people who need posts moved over can then just copy it over themselves. Other than that, the only other holdup I can think of would be integration of their paid customer database, cant see that taking them to long tho. |
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| Maybe the top-most forum should be a combined "New to Monkey / Lite Users" forum, as an obvious place for basic questions. As for domains, BlitzMonkey.com and Monkey2d.com are both available, I think. Personally, I find those better than monkeycoder.co.nz, and may help with search. I'm no seo expert, just to be clear!! Since working with monkey requires a slightly different approach (translated language) theres always some barrier to new users. Also, the demo doesn't really let you really see the cross-platform potential. I know its more work, but perhaps the demo should allow translation of all the example programs to any target. But, the demo is still limited, so you cant really compare to cocos2d-x etc where there is zero barrier to entry. Edit - but yes, I do find it a shame not to see monkey mentioned at every gamejam/event! But, its partly up to us devs to get the word out too. |
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| well, to be honest 'monkeycoder.co.nz' is not so easy to remember... if you google for blitzbasic the first result is what you are looking for. With 'monkey' the result is in the first page, ok, but not in the first position. And even something like 'android game software creation' doesnt offer a valid link to Monkey. (ps: I found, with the above search key, this http://www.pixelprospector.com/the-big-list-of-game-making-tools/ they point to BlizMax (great...) but it's not for Android, what I'm looking for! ) An 'unique' name, in term of searching, would be very useful. I just remember that Mark choosed a different name from 'Blitz-what', I dont know for what reason. In any case Monkey is just very powerfull tool/language, it's only a shame that the world seems to dont' find it out. About the demo limitation: the first thing I could sugget is to allow to download an APP DEMO created with Monkey (and the source for HTML5/demo) to show to the potential user how the app/demo runs on their device. It's easier than creating a demo with limited time function and so on. So there's a wip on the forum? Interesting... |
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| That site above is missing *alot* of stuff. No GLBasic, gideros, marmalade, none of the free HTML5 game frameworks like MelonJS, LimeJS, Crafty etc etc. Renaming Monkey to Mojo gets my vote, I disagree, it would have the same issue, its a generic term and a slang term. You need some abstract word that has no apparent meaning or uses an acronym like MGS, hang-on that's metal gear solid. You know what I mean. Best example is 'gideros' you won't find much else but material related to the game engine. Gary |
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| If considering a change to the name, Blitz Monkey would be better for SEO. This website already comes at number one for that search. |
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| I agree with Leon, "Blitz Monkey" is the key. Type it on Google, and this site is the first result. The Language itself could still be referenced as 'Monkey', so no harm done there...! |
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| That does seem a practical way of cashing in on the Blitz name. (And when you think of it, Blitz has probably been instrumental in the sale of most Monkeys so far anyway!) |
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| I think the main reason they went with monkey, was to move away from having anything basic related to the product, and you cant think Blitz without hearing a little voice in the back of your head yell back Basic, even searching yields endless results for basic in some form, the two are forever linked. Which is a shame because I never really felt there was anything Basic about Max, or B3D. |
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| IMHO, Monkey/Mojo is one of the best kept enthusiast programming secrets. I'd rather half the planet didn't use it. I don't think multi-platform pocket nuclear weapons are for everyone. Often A thing gets too popular and a massive idiot contingent seems to form around it. Happy slapping and mobile phone cameras being a prime example. Blinded pilots and laser pointers being the other.. I guess what I'm trying to say is, lets keep monkey a dirty little secret. One that the less savvy and more malicious of our ape descended cousins fail to spot. ;) Community, not a metropolis, please :) |
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| I completely agree with Grant but from time to time I get scared about the chance that Monkey's so called "not popularity" will result in it's declination (like a lack of profit or personal disapointment about project not getting much fame as expected) |
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| I don't think fear of the B-word was an issue - anyone looking at Monkey syntax will see that some of it comes from Basic (I would say it looks like a cross between Basic and Java). |
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| BASIC really works well on proprietary hardware platforms like the micros of old. Sure it was clunky and slow to use most of the time but some versions had inline assembly, the versions that didn't still had the poke command so you could get your native ninja on. basic was as basic as you decided to see it. :) now it's almost treated like a dirty word without valid reason for being so. Hell some IBM PC's had a basic on ROM if you fired the thing up without a disk. Personally I don't worry about the longevity of monkey and its basic like syntax because Mark seems to be one very committed guy and monkey fits into the market very well indeed, and it keeps getting better and more refined. coming NDK and low level 3D shizzle. Oh yes, the future is looking bright for those who discover monkey, and more people will. |
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| IMHO, Monkey/Mojo is one of the best kept enthusiast programming secrets. I'd rather half the planet didn't use it. I don't think multi-platform pocket nuclear weapons are for everyone. Often A thing gets too popular and a massive idiot contingent seems to form around it. O and Visual Basic 3 when it came out in the mid 90s! Cue a whole army of people who had barely used a computer calling themselves programmers overnight! And then cue a whole raft of shitty UIs and awful programs churned out en masse! I wouldnt see BASIC as an issue either. Its what I started with back in the humble days of ZX81 and started commercially in the late 80s using gw-basic and qbasic. Gary |
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| I think we need to recognize that a very large portion of people will read BASIC and without even trying their brain will automatically make connection, Basic, Simple, Low Quality, Bottom of the pile, it's a word used to describe so many other things in the world it simply cant be helped. "Is that the new F16 with bells and whistles ?", "Nah its the basic model" instant feeling of Ough, ok... "Is that the new Ford Mustang ?" , "nah just the basic road model." ,"Oh!!.." were bombarded with this all through life, so when people wanting to learn programming, or even people who already know some other language start looking, most of the time, they want power, speed, top of the line, they do not want Basic. they have been brain washed all through out their lives to understand that Basic is the first step on the product ladder. That might sound shallow but its true, I think, I also don't see anything about monkey as being basic at all, and think it would be a crime if it got re branded to have basic in its name. Not all people are grew up with Amstrad , or Micro Basic, when they hear the word they don't think , syntax, low level,machine code, they think the above. I'm sure of it. |
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| The language is cool, but I've always hated the name. I tend to agree. How are you going to explain to someone that you are a Monkey programmer? The name makes it sound like a toy. I have tried to tell people about it but they won't even look at it on that basis alone. At the end of the day that is probably good for us because it will limit the competition but it also limits BRL's success, IMO. If I didn't come to it through Blitz, which I knew was amazing, I would never have even tried it. And yes, it's shallow, but people are shallow. I also don't see anything about monkey as being basic at all, and think it would be a crime if it got re branded to have basic in its name. Calling something BASIC that has lists, interfaces, OOP, etc. is goalpost-moving in the extreme. There are certainly some things that are BASIC-like and it will run BASIC code from the early 80s with little modification but it has capability sort of in the ballpark of C++, minus templates which are very useful but not necessary for our purposes... I have actually been afraid of a huge adoption of Monkey saturating the casual game marketplace. |
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| when I type in monkeycoder in google I always think about the term code monkey:(wiki) Code Monkey, a derogatory term for an unskilled programmer who is only able to perform trivial or repetitive computer programming tasks or a reference to a job that treats even experienced computer programmers in a way that trivializes their problem solving abilities. Can also be used as a derogatory term to express "even a monkey could write this code", which is often resented by computer programmer(s) as it trivializes the complexity of programming and it makes me sad a little |
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| I'd agree with the name, its too common to easily find relevant stuff. The worst program name by far that I've run into is 'Links', a text-based webbrowser browser for the Linux shell. (Modern flavor of Lynx). Good luck searching for information about 'links' on the internet. -- most search term combinations for 'links' and 'linux' return hundreds of millions of irrelevant results. |
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| I like the name Monkey. The problem with names is that you have to agree whether or not it's a good / bad name, some people will like it, others will not, that's life. If the name 'Monkey' was the wrong decision then what would everyone call it? BlitzFire? FireBlitz? FireBasic? BlahBlahBasic? MobileBlitz? CrossPlatFormBasic? The name Monkey signifies something fresh, new and different, I personally don't think it was a bad decision. |
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| The problem with names is that you have to agree whether or not it's a good / bad name, some people will like it, others will not, that's life. No the problem is using a 'generic' term or a proper noun which occurs with high frequency in search results, errr....like Monkey! The name Monkey signifies something fresh, new and different, I personally don't think it was a bad decision. Is that for real? Monkey signifies what is....a primate! |
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| @garyk1968, A primate that is considered intelligent! Sorry, but I didn't realise you were a marketing guru! Share your expertise and genius with the Monkey community, think up a better name! |
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| XB57G12LANG would be a better name. Tea boy: your sarcasm is childish and not constructive. |
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| Monkey's fine. It worked for Python, didn't it? (And what an overhyped language that is.) |
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| I don't know if Python is overhyped. It's pretty damn sophisticated and allows constructs that aren't easy in most others (lambdas, eval, etc) most of which come from functional programming. If I was going to write a large project I would definitely write it in python with C for any processor intensive bits. The issue I have with the name is the negative connotations as mentioned above. Issues with search engines are not my problem but might be an issue with marketing the product. Complaining about the name is a minor nitpick for us, obviously we bought it and are invested enough in it to argue about the name of the product. Perhaps Mark wanted it to have a friendly sound for beginners. |
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| @zoqfotpik Neither is this thread! Damn, it's a name, it's only a damn name, live with it! |
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| It's just that this product seems to be some sort of secret that very few people know about. I don't know what sales figures are, so I have to judge by forum traffic here and mentions that I see on dev forums elsewhere. There aren't very many, and I get the sense that people are aware of it but haven't tried it. I find that incredibly bizarre, considering that in my knowledge there are no other products on the market that will do what Monkey does in terms of compile targets. Since it's not the product itself, it must mean that something else is hurting adoption of the language and I just have to wonder if it's the name. Even with nonexistent marketing, far inferior libraries like SFML have much better market penetration. I wouldn't say anything about it but I see good sales of BRL products as being in my best interests. Damn, it's a name, it's only a damn name, live with it! I'm not a marketing guy but I can tell you that names are so incredibly important that there are entire marketing firms that do nothing but come up with names for products. |
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| I know teaboy not easy! I cant share my genius (cos I don't have it) :) I would brainstorm ideas. For a start the latin for monkey is 'simia' or 'simius', I would play with english words and translate them to come up with something abstract. I'm with you @zoqfotpik the number of targets are amazing. The only things that comes close are JS/HTML5 frameworks which then need to be wrapped using phonegap or cocoon.js for mobile platforms. Ive used a couple and development time is longer than monkey, errr I mean simius :) Gary |
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| "Show us yer Simius" doesn't have the same ring to it! :P |
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| I think Simia has a very cool ring to it. Sounds like a nod to Simula :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simula |
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| At $75 or whatever it was for this product I feel like I stole it. |
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| Does anybody know with any reliability where the name Monkey came from for this language? My current theory is it was purely for the setup of the "brand spanking new" joke on the home page. :) Now it's "next-generation", which sounds a bit more hipster. |
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