Article 47

Say hello to Treehouse, the new name for Think Vitamin Membership

By Ryan Carson @ryancarson

29 March 2011 | Category: Asides

We’ve got big news :) We’re re-branding Think Vitamin Membership, our video training service for Web Designers and Developers. We’ve chosen the name Treehouse and we’re SUPER excited about it :) You can also follow us at @treehouse.

Here’s a video explaining how we decided on the name, some hurdles we had to overcome on the way, and a couple lessons you can learn from the whole thing.

Here are the helpful links for brainstorming name/domain ideas:

If you can’t see the above video, please view it here on Facebook.

Look forward to hearing your thoughts!

Follow @thinkvitamin on Twitter Please check out Treehouse

Other Posts You Might Find Interesting

Sorry - No Related Posts Found

Comments

http://twitter.com/thomasoffinga Thomas Offinga

Thanks Ryan, great video. Very cool that you guys are opening up this entire thought process. :)

Here’s another tool for finding –short– domain names: http://domai.nr/

I got a question, is the Campfire chat gone?
http://joostschuur.com Joost Schuur

Kind of invokes Forrst, the web development/design community, so it fits.

Video not playing on the iPad BTW.
http://twitter.com/emilyevelina emily davis

Hey Ryan, thanks for sharing the thought process. An interesting journey…

I understand the desire to brand up the membership part of Think Vitamin and to separate it out from the blog part of this ‘offering’. However, I do wonder if we always need to brand up services.

I totally get that it’s great to have separate Twitter handles, domains etc but, perhaps users see them as one and the same thing? Or, just see them as separate services.

You’ll have a greater understanding of what your user-base wants and feels but I just think that sometimes (and this isn’t necessarily the case here) companies over-complicate things but branding up products and services.

I’m sure you considered this, but I wonder whether there really is a problem with referring to the membership and the blog as Think Vitamin? Your blog is content and your membership is access to greater content and learning. Does it need to be branded up separately?

You hinted at the longtail journey in your video so I’m sure this is all thought out in terms of where you want to get to in the future. I’m sure it’ll be a great success – I just wanted to say that I thought Think Vitamin was and is a strong brand in its own right – it didn’t necessarily require a separate brand for the membership.

Although – I’m not *yet* a member, so perhaps I’m missing something…?
Henrik

That 24H-sale a few weeks back and now this rebranding only makes my theory that think vitamin isn’t profitable and not working.

Good luck Ryan, you are a much better person than I am. But I believe Think Vitamin / treehouse is going down… fast.
http://twitter.com/paulsalterWD Paul

Nice, i’m excited to see how this project turns out. You’ve got a great community behind you, so make sure you make the best of us, test test test!

Anyway good luck guys!
http://twitter.com/paulsalterWD Paul

I agree, Think Vitamin is already a strong brand and has the perfect connotations for what it is. But i’m sure with the correct marketing, treehouse can have that same effect.
rabm

Can’t quite see your logic Henrik. Its not uncommon for growing businesses to rebrand at this stage, especially if they’re not happy with the name. It becomes much more difficult for an established brand to change, but a relatively new one – especially online – is much easier.

Also, the 24hr sale is a great marketing idea. Even if only 5% of the new subscribers continue past the first free month, then you’ve increased your member base significantly in one day. How does it show that it isn’t working?
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Ha ha :) Like that.
http://twitter.com/NeilBradley Neil Bradley

Great new name Ryan. Will the pricing plans be called Branches? ;)
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Thanks Paul!
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

As I explained in the video, we’ve been humbled by how successful the service is. It’s surpassed all our expectations.
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Thanks for your feedback Emily. Much appreciated.

When we re-launch, you’ll see what all the fuss is about ;)
http://twitter.com/emilyevelina emily davis

I await with baited breath! :)
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Domai.nr is great – thanks. Forgot to mention it :)
Anonymous

Great name. I just hope the service improves. As mentioned previously, you have a great community behind you Ryan, wanting this to succeed, but sooner or later you are going to start annoying your current customers.

We’ve only had 12 videos in the last three weeks when we should have had 30. When I asked the question a few weeks ago, you said that it was because you were working on the Master Classes. I’m a ‘silver’ member so I don’t get access to these classes as I can’t afford the ‘gold’ membership presently. Why should I be made to suffer for your ‘gold’ memberships?

You seem to be constantly going on about how great Think Vitamin is to it’s staff, but you are letting your customers down.

Before starting new projects, isn’t it worth making sure you have enough resource available to look after your existing clients?

I love the current content, presentation style and subjects. I just want to get what you advertise and what I pay for…
Anonymous

$2000 for a twitter handle?!?

I didn’t realise twitter handle sales had come so far forward
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Hey Nick,

Thanks for commenting, I always appreciate hearing from our Members.

I know you’re frustrated and I apologize. Let me explain what’s going on …

We’re in the final stages of hiring a new Teacher that will be starting May 1st. This will mean that you guys will get more than the 10 videos per week that you signed up for (which is obviously a good thing).

Jim’s Master Class is going to be 120 minutes total. What we can do is make this master class available to Silver Members. That way you get the total amount of footage we promised.

Then our new Teacher will be starting and we’ll get back to normal levels of video (or higher) than the originally promised 10 videos per week.

How does that sound?

I apologize for the lack of posting new videos. We’re trying to hire more teachers as quickly as we can to fix the situation.

Kind regards,
Ryan
http://twitter.com/ben_eb Ben Briggs

Indeed. I got in on the 24 hour sale because I thought that ten new videos a week would be of great help. I’ve especially enjoyed the section on 3D transforms and animations which was very helpful and informative, but as you say there are still 18 outstanding videos.

I realise that ten videos a week is a lot of content to produce, so I’m not disappointed that I’m getting less than that, but that the service has been sold as having that many new videos per week.
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Hi Ben. Thanks so much for signing up. Please see my response to Nick, below.
Anonymous

It depends what Jim’s Master Class is on. If it covers content that is already available in the Training Library then I don’t think this is a good deal.

Sorry, I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just keen to learn new stuff (not go over stuff already learnt in other tutorials)…
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

It’s covering brand new topics: HTML5 mobile apps with Backbone and jQuery Touch

I think you’ll love it.
Anonymous

Cheers Ryan. Sounds good. I’m happy with that if other silver members are.
http://planetoftheweb.com planetoftheweb

My favorite domain brainstorming tool…http://www.bustaname.com. Built in thesaurus and different combination options.
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Awesome tool – thanks!
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

They’re insanely valuable now.
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Yes, Flash video (from Facebook) isn’t iOS friendly :(
http://twitter.com/ben_eb Ben Briggs

Thanks Ryan but I’d rather cancel after my trial period is up. Sounds like you still have a lot of kinks to sort out, and y’know, I didn’t sign up for two videos a week. Best of luck with it though.
You

Treehouse is the name of a children’s TV channel in Canada.
http://joostschuur.com Joost Schuur

Can you talk about the process of ‘buying’ a Twitter handle? Do they have to be approved through Twitter still, or do they look away and you just keep quiet about the deal?
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

We transferred the money to them via PayPal and then they sent us the password. It was straight forward.
http://twitter.com/JasonStanley Jason Stanley

Not keen on treehouse.. really don’t like teamtreehouse which doesn’t make much sense to me. A treehouse is a place where kids play. It isn’t a place of learning. You then have team treehouse. I find it baffling to be honest. Why would a team call itself treehouse? You wouldn’t call yourself team car or team table… I must be missing something.

I like think vitamin membership. The website is think vitamin. TV is the brand surely.. You can sign up to become a member and watch video tutorials… hence think vitamin membership. I don’t see a problem.

I really don’t like the gamification news.. come here to learn and improve skills. Not to earn badges or level up. A quiz on a section is good as it helps make things stick… Badges, levels, whatever else seems pointless and if it is a central feature of the website it will probably become irritating.

I guess the only thing that could make it worse is if you employ a woodland theme. Something which I would associate more to children learning then web developers.
http://twitter.com/fourandthree Levin Mejia

Really like the name and especially the url, TeamTreehouse.com; awesome! I’m currently a member through work and it will be great to show how much I have completed with the badges.

Keep up the great work.

Ps. currently looking for cheap flights to head down to FOWA ;)
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Thanks Levin! :)
http://twitter.com/JohnyByrne John

As long as you keep a Treehouse feature link from the Thinkvitamin website then I’m happy. I’m always jumping to the membership section ‘from’ Thinkvitamin to see new videos to entice me into signing up. I expect others are too.
Love everything Thinkvitamin does!
http://twitter.com/JohnyByrne John

As long as you keep a Treehouse feature link from the Thinkvitamin website then I’m happy. I’m always jumping to the membership section ‘from’ Thinkvitamin to see new videos to entice me into signing up. I expect others are too.
Love everything Thinkvitamin does!
http://danielmorosan.com Daniel Morosan

Thanks for the links! Really helpful, I’d say
http://liamgooding.com Liam Gooding

Hmm no kind of escrow deal? I wonder if this means there’s soon to be a wave of ‘hoarders’, and if so if Twitter would step in for those extreme cases?

anyways, sorry to digress – looking forward to seeing more of the rebrand!
http://www.pieldrip.com.au Chris

This is great advice, thanks Ryan. Plus I can’t wait to see the new site!

BTW how did you contact twitter about using an existing profile. I will be going through the same thing very soon.
Donaldodavid Desuza

Sure we welcome to Treehouse. Lovely and beautiful.
http://thesnuggieblanket.net
Henrik

It’s a gut feeling. And what amazes me is that the tutorials aren’t worth the price since it isn’t that much new. I do look forward to the master class. Perhaps that’ll show the real potential of treehouse.
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

We contacted the account owner, not Twitter
Kevin

Awesome news, Ryan. Thanks!

I know you guys have a ton of awesome new ideas – and I’m really excited to see what changes you’ve made and what cool new features you’ll be implementing. Also, the badge idea is brilliant! How about a visual infographic of a tree on our profile? The tree would have branches that have HTML, CSS, Javascript, etc. badges on the branches. As you level up your skills, you climb the branches of the tree and achieve the badges as you complete the quizzes. That way, you can have a visual representation of your level of skill – sort of like a time line – but incremental as your skillset increases.

Maybe you’ve already thought of that – I know you mentioned the idea of climbing branches in the video above, but you didn’t mention using any graphics to visualize the process other than the badges.

Thanks again, Ryan – Love your work!
http://carsonified.com Ryan Carson

Thanks Kevin! Love your ideas :) See you in the Treehouse ;)
http://twitter.com/janschjetne Jan Schjetne

From what I understand selling and buying Twitter accounts is a pretty serious breach of Twitter TOS. As per usual procedure you’ve considered the fine print TL;DR…
http://twitter.com/janschjetne Jan Schjetne

Unless of course the seller has a special agreement with Twitter permitting him/her to do so.
http://twitter.com/themattyg Matt Graham

I’ll have a hard time explaining the differences between the Children’s network in Canada and this service to my wife… but, y’know, I have a hard time explaining a lot of the things I do. :D
http://twitter.com/hellomuller Tom Muller

Interesting move to rebrand so soon. I hope the switch goes smoothly, but isn’t buying and selling @usernames against the terms and conditions of Twitter?

Topics

Learn with Treehouse

Say hello to Treehouse, the new name for Think Vitamin Membership

By Ryan Carson @ryancarson

29 March 2011 | Category: Asides

Other Posts You Might Find Interesting

Comments

Think Vitamin Radio
Episode #34: Amazon Fire and Responsive Roundtable

Advisory Board

Aarron Walter

Ethan Marcotte

Molly Holzschlag

Paul Boag

Jeff Veen

Ryan Carson

Topics

Learn with Treehouse

Say hello to Treehouse, the new name for Think Vitamin Membership

By Ryan Carson @ryancarson

29 March 2011 | Category: Asides

Other Posts You Might Find Interesting

Comments

Think Vitamin RadioEpisode #34: Amazon Fire and Responsive Roundtable

Advisory Board

Aarron Walter

Ethan Marcotte

Molly Holzschlag

Paul Boag

Jeff Veen

Ryan Carson

Think Vitamin Radio
Episode #34: Amazon Fire and Responsive Roundtable