I often get asked how I came up with the name “Demo Duck”. The story is rather dull, but I’ll tell it anyway just so it’s on the record and maybe I can avoid the question a little more. Fair warning, reading this post will most likely be an anticlimactic waste of your time.
When I started the company nearly 2 years ago, we were only creating simple screencast videos, or demo videos. Since the keywords in your URL can have a significant effect on search rankings, I thought the word “demo” was going to be our ticket to success. Unfortunately, it hasn’t panned out that way, and in fact, we rarely if ever use the term when discussing our videos, but it seemed relevant at the time. With demo in hand, I needed to come up with a second word that had a nice ring, and most importantly, was available as a domain name. I spent a few hours trying every combination possible, exhausting as many categories as I could think of – locations (e.g. laboratory, dungeon, aquarium), vehicles (e.g. spaceship, rocket, yacht), people (e.g. nerd, beast, squire) – and eventually landed on animals. After unsuccessfully attempting Demo Dog, Demo Deer, Demo Donkey, Demo Dingo and the like, I landed on Demo Duck. I’ve liked ducks every since watching Mighty Ducks and Duck Tales, so it stuck. 2 years later, our office is filled with rubber ducks from around the world. Better than donkeys I suppose.
So that’s the story. If you’re still reading this, I apologize for taking up 3 minutes of your life, but now you know!