Turns Out, ‘Social Membership’ Was Confusing. So We’re Fixing It.

Starting January 1, we’re renaming our Social Membership to Coworking Membership. Why? It turns out the name was creating confusion—for members, prospects, accountants, and Google.

Why the change? One of our newest marketing team members, Shoaib Ameer, asked the question – why is your membership named differently from everyone else in the industry. The truth was, we hadnt really thought of it much lately. We originally named this product “Social Membership” after we re-branded Yeager Office Suites’ locations in DFW to Caddo Office Reimagined. They called their open workspace product a Y-membership and we needed to change that. We were inspired by the social membership option that many country clubs offered – some of the benefits of a full golf membership, but at a fraction of the cost.

This was probably OK, especially given that the industry had a lot of different names for open workspace and our newest location at the time was a block from Lakewood Country Club. But things have changed in 5 years:

• Coworking (no dash!) has become the industry standard—and it’s what people actually search for online.
• “Social Membership” sounded… too social. Some folks thought it was a supper club or a place to sip cocktails, not a serious work option.
• Expense reports were getting flagged. Some members had trouble justifying a “social” expense to their company’s accounting team.
• It undersold what we actually offer. Just because it’s an open workspace doesn’t mean it’s noisy or unstructured. Our coworking areas include semi-private tables, phone booths, quiet perches, and fractional office time.