In early January, Amazon rolled out a feature that allows Kindle users to lend books to another Kindle user a for 14 day period. KindleLendingClub spawned from this feature as a way to connect people for lending their e-books. The service quickly accumulated more than 12,000 people lending and borrowing on the platform. Users can post books that they want to lend in a public forum and can also request to borrow books. And you can search for borrowers and lenders by title on the platform.
Unfortunately, KindleLendingClub just received a call from Amazon, requesting that the startup change its name and domain. After all, Amazon owns the trademark for ‘Kindle’ and is within its rights to ask the startup to change its name. And Amazon has enforced this in the past.
So, KindleLendingClub is now rebranding as BookLending.com, which is unfortunately not as great of a name for its service. A word of advice to startups—check the trademark data base before picking your name and domain.