We?re excited to share that appear.in is now Whereby! We?re changing the name, but keeping the same easy video meetings you know and love. For practical information about what happens to meeting rooms, see the FAQ at the bottom of this post or visit our Support Center.
Since we started we?ve made it our mission to make collaborating from anywhere as simple as possible. We?ve come a long way since then and last year more than 10 million unique users around the world used us to have 58 million video meetings! As a result we have users in almost every country and territory across the globe, and we think that?s pretty amazing. Our team has also grown to include 23 people across 12 different locations. So much of what we do is driven by our own experience to knock down these borders and bring our own team together.
In the beginning, our name represented what our product did. Simply share a link and you can appear in your room together. As the years have progressed, you?ve shown us how work can be multifaceted and the unique challenges video meetings can help overcome. From standup meetings to 1:1 interviews, or simply bringing loved ones together across distances; you?re constantly inspiring us and teaching us the true meaning of the Future of Work. Thank you for that!
We believe the first call over WebRTC between Chrome, Firefox and Opera was done on appear.in. Our design sure has come a long way since then!
This spring we were planning a complete brand overhaul and to update our visual profile. However in April a long-standing trademark dispute did not end in our favor. We?ll do a follow-up post about the intricacies of trademark law, but essentially the word ?appear? posed some challenges. When a word is descriptive of the activity you want to trademark it for, the trademark is not allowed to avoid blocking normal use of the word. We believed the word ?appear? was descriptive for the category ?video conferencing?. Long story short, after two rounds in court were we won the first and lost the second one, we then saw no other option but to find a new name.
What?s in a name?
Finding a new name for an internet service is no easy task today. The criteria we started working with was as follows:
- Global ? We have users literally all over the world, so it must be easy to say and write it in most languages (even though it won?t have a meaning in all languages).
- Short ? Since links are a central part of our service, we wanted something that was not too long and would work well as a URL.
- Trademarkable ? Given our current predicament, we obviously wanted to avoid more legal trouble in the future. So it would have to be a name that we could get a trademark registered for in most countries and with no other existing registrations that could be problematic (which is much harder than you might think!).
- Domain availability ? One of the issues with appear.in was the .in domain. We got appearin.com, but not appear.com (and we never saw ourselves as just ?appear? either). However finding a name that has an available .com domain is incredibly hard!
- Friendly and positive ? We strive to bring humanity into work-life by bringing people together and forming personal relationships even when they?re far apart. Our name had to be something that could embody this.
Our new name Whereby is an aspiration for the future of work. Today it no longer matters where the work happens and by what method. Every day, our team works side by side even though we?re in different countries and continents. Some live in big cities, others live in a small village by the coast where their family is. If they want to move, the job can move with them. Every day they can choose to work from the location that suits them best for that day. Work no longer always happens in a downtown office and between 9?5. The best creative thinking and problem solving often happens in the most random places where you get inspiration, or when you are able to deeply focus in isolation without disturbances. We want to be a tool that can accompany people wherever they go, to allow them to instantly connect with others and collaborate when needed. Please accompany us on this journey of exploring how we can make the future of work more human!
Learn more about our new name in our brand story
So what does this all mean for me and my account?
What is happening to Rooms and Accounts?
We will automatically update your meeting room links, so there?s nothing you need to do for your rooms. Your room names will stay the same, but now they will be accessible at a whereby.com address (https://whereby.com/roomname). All of your account details will stay the same, and you can continue to log in using the same email address as before.
Temporarily, both appear.in and whereby room links will be usable for accessing your rooms. However, soon the appear.in domain will no longer be usable for video meetings, and we will be fully transitioned over to the whereby.com domain. Don?t worry though, we?ll notify you again before this happens.
When is this change happening?
As of today, August 14, 2019, all appear.in accounts have been transitioned to Whereby.com. You will still be able to use appear.in room links up until September 1, 2019. After that point, appear.in links will no longer work and you?ll need to use your whereby.com link.
Is anything else changing that I should know about?
Initially, only our domain will be changing, but stay tuned as we roll out a new visual profile to accompany our new name. Along with this, keep an eye out for some great product updates including a brand new meeting room experience, larger meetings, and powerful integrations!
If you have any questions that weren?t covered here or if you just want more information, please connect with our Support Team
