This weekend rumors began circling that Microsoft is about to rebrand Live Search as “Kumo.com.” Apparently Kumo translates to either “spider” or “cloud” in Japanese. All things considered it sounds like a pretty logical choice, if not a terribly awkward word, and yet another expensive branding exercise. I can’t quite imagine anyone saying “I don’t know, lets Kumo it.”

Just this past week I was meeting with Jeff Schick, the head of social software at IBM, and coincidentally we started talking branding — Bluehouse was the big hit of the analyst conference, by the way. Apparently when IBM was naming Lotus Connections they hired a branding consultancy to help with the decision. The big winner from the consultancy: SCOVE. Yes, you read that correctly, SCOVE. I don’t know if it was an acronym or an actual word, I didn’t have the chance to ask since Jeff and I were laughing too hard. Needless to say that particular branding firm did not make their commission, and Jeff’s team came up with the name Connections themselves. Now when one of Jeff’s team members is trying to pass off a crap idea they are accused of “Scoving.”

Frankly I’m not sure I could have recommended clients take a look at IBM SCOVE with a straight face, though I didn’t think Wii or Hulu would roll off the tongue quite so smooth either. Maybe “Kumo it” will catch on, but I would put my money on “dude, you totally got Kumo’d” entering the lexicon instead.

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