Logos Bible Software (the company) = Faithlife Corporation (coming soon!)

Summary: Logos Bible Software has been both a product and a company name. In the future, Logos Bible Software will continue to be the product name, but Faithlife Corporation will be the company name. The company is not for sale, has not been sold, etc. -- it is the same company. It's just getting a new legal name for the corporate entity.

From an internal email announcing the coming change:

You may have noticed that the copyright statements on our web sites are moving to "Copyright 2014 Faithlife / Logos Bible Software".

Summary: Logos Bible Software is our flagship product, and we are not changing its name, URL, or branding. We are going to separate the name of that product and the business, though, by changing the legal name of the corporation to Faithlife Corporation, to encompass our increasingly diverse products and services.

Background and Details

Our platform strategy requires a wider variety of product lines. https://www.logos.com/websites gives a taste of what we're doing, and it doesn't yet reflect Noet.com, FaithSmiles.com, and other projects in the works.

In 1991 we were founded as Logos Research Systems, Inc. Back then I imaged we'd be known as LRS (trust me, that was in style then), and we thought Bible software would be just one of a broad assortment of consumer software products. We tried to register LRS.com. But that domain name wasn't available (in 1991!), so we ended up with our second choice: Logos.com. Which we pronounced "low-gose", until someone with more Greek education (at a school preferring Erasmian pronunciation, apparently) convinced us to switch to "lah-gahs". (I'm now trying to train myself to go back to "low-gose", so we can be more consumer-friendly.)

Back then it wasn't as easy to research a business name, and over the years we learned of more than one Logos corporation (http://www.logos.net/, http://www.logosinc.com/, http://www.logos-technologies.com/, http://logoscorp.com/, etc.), Logos publisher (https://www.logosproductions.com/, http://www.logospubco.com/, http://www.logospublishinghouse.com/, etc.), Logos schools, Logos bookstores, Logos ships (medical missions), and Logos church management software. None-the-less, we built a strong brand (and got a registered trademark) for Logos in Bible software.

In the early 2000's we re-branded the company Logos Bible Software when we switched to the cross and magnifying glass logo. Even then I worried about how long 'software' would feel current in an increasingly web-based world (where software still rules, but usually as a service or an 'app' -- not a thing consumers download).

It sure would be nice to become Logos Corporation -- even if people still aren't sure how to pronounce it! But that option isn't available to us, and so we have created a variety of related brand names for different purposes: Libronix, Lexham, Faithlife, Vyrso, Verbum, Noet, Biblia, Bible Screen, etc.

The legal entity remains Logos Research Systems, Inc., d.b.a. Logos Bible Software and some of the other brand names. ("d.b.a." means doing business as, and is a legal name registration that allows us to receive checks made out to, and conduct business in the name of, the d.b.a.)

It feels a bit off to hold a paper book that says Copyright 2014 Logos Bible Software. It's not software! But if we do all the business under all the separate names, we lose the value of building up a central brand.

All of this leads to where we are now: a business in need of a single, large brand under which multiple divisions / products / sub-brands can live. That brand is going to be Faithlife. It's descriptive, it's easy to pronounce, it's consumer-friendly, it's broad enough to cover software, publishing, and the web, and we own a federally registered trademark for it.

Later this year we will change the legal name of the business to Faithlife Corporation. (You can call it Faithlife, or Faithlife Corp. in short formal form.) Your paychecks will come from Faithlife Corporation. Your employee badge will say Faithlife. The signs on the buildings will read Faithlife. Users' accounts will be Faithlife accounts. Most of our brands, web sites, and copyrights will be 'Powered by Faithlife' or 'Part of the Faithlife Web Network' and 'Copyright 2014 Faithlife Corporation'.

Employees will be able to get email at both name@logos.com and name@faithlife.com. (Some people already have name@verbum.com and name@noet.com accounts.) If your job is all about Logos that may stay your public email address; in other areas we may prefer Faithlife addresses. That's among the issues we are still working out.

We are not abandoning the Logos brand. Logos Bible Software will still be our flagship product, and http://logos.com will be mostly unchanged. We have a huge amount of brand equity in the Logos name, and we intend to keep it and build on it.

Logos Bible Software will refer to a product, though, and that product will be from Faithlife Corporation. The About page at Logos.com will make it clear that Logos is part of Faithlife Corporation, and some of the 'corporate' pages will move to the Faithlife site.

It is important that we help our users, partners, and others see this change correctly: as brand refinement for an existing business, not as a company sale or merger.

In preparation for the transition, anywhere we refer to Logos Bible Software as a company we should start to use Faithlife / Logos Bible Software. We will transition in phases:

1) Both names in copyright statements (subtle and out of the way);

2) An explanatory forum post; [NOTE: This is it!]

3) Both names in more public places ('Powered by Faithlife/Logos Reftagger' in Reftagger's popup, in emails from Logos, etc.);

4) The formal announcement and legal change, with explanatory web page;

5) An explanatory blog post at http://blog.logos.com;

6) Moving copyright to just Faithlife, etc.

But for now we want to get people comfortable with seeing the names together, and we don't want to jump immediately to the most prominent places and spark confusion. This is not the time to share this news on Facebook or Twitter or your blog. Wait for Phase 4.

The key is to not shock or confuse our users; we need to take small steps and start with having the names appear together frequently to the point where they are simply associated. The answer to the question 'Did Logos get acquired?' is 'No. Faithlife is Logos; it's just a new name for the business to distinguish the company from the product.'