The 15 dumbest names for Web 2.0 startups

Written on 13th October 2008                                                                                                              111 COMMENTS
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

I’m someone who frantically scours the web for interesting new online trends, concepts, startups and projects at any given time of any day. It’s something I simply can’t turn off, I just have a passion for finding new stuff and find out if it resonates with me from a user and business perspective. That also means I come across a mountain of poorly executed websites and applications, or startups that have business models that you just know will never bring in a dime of revenue.

But what strikes me most is the awful names that are given to services and applications. I realize naming is a difficult thing, and finding the domain name to match the name or description you have in mind is virtually impossible these days. I also realize names don’t necessarily have to be descriptive enough to sum up what you do in one or two words, as long as it’s memorable and distinctive enough.

How many people would have considered ‘Google’ a good name for a search engine in the late nineties or even at the dawn of the new millennium? Or Yahoo! for that matter?

Update: per request in the comments, here are some interesting articles on naming:

Seth Godin – the new rules of naming
Folksonomy – 7 tips for naming your Web 2.0 startup
GigaOm – 3 rules for naming your startup
LSVP blog – Naming your startup
Startup Spark - Everything You Need To Know About Naming a Startup
TechRepublic - The dos and don’ts of naming your start-up
GigaOM - A Two-part Rule for Naming Your Startup
Seth Godin – Sloppy naming
Fort Worth Startup blog – Naming your startup
Entrepreneur.com – Naming your business
Name Ideas - Naming Your Start-up: Simple Do’s and Don’ts
Guy Kawasaki – The Name Game

But still, here’s a list of 15 startups I personally think have some of the dumbest names in the Web 2.0 industry (note that I’m not judging their actual service), in no particular order:

1. Adaptive Blue

Develops personalization technologies that leverage semantics and attention.

My guess is they absolutely wanted to use the word ‘adaptive’ but were unable to get the right domain name, so they just picked any color and magically combined the words into something horrendously unmemorable.

2. Thoof

Personalized/social news recommender

Thoof. Pfoof. Floof. Any startup that gets named after a farting sound deserves to be on this list.  Enough said. Note: Thoof was reportedly deadpooled, but the domain now points to Reddit. I wonder if this was a generous last configuration of the owner or an unreported acquisition?

3. Weebly

AJAX website creator

Weebly has some ring to it, but compare it to the names of their closest competitors (Synthasite, Webnode, KickApps, etc.) and it sounds more like a kid’s toy, or an adult website. I’m guessing ‘weeb’ is supposed to make you think of the term ‘web’, but I’m really not sure. According to UrbanDictionary, it can also refer to a monkey penis or someone who would do anything to get some attention.

4. Yoono

Social link and tag sharing network

Yoowhat? A typical example of a startup so desperate to have a two-syllable name that they’d have picked anything that sounded remotely pronounceable. Except of course you’re likely to forget the name or the spelling of it after a heartbeat.

5. Zlio

Gives users the ability to create their own shops and sell goods from other e-commerce services.

A ‘z’ isn’t meant to be followed by another consonant, and there’s a good reason for that. It’s not only hard to pronounce – I personally tied a knot in my tongue -, it’s also extremely forgettable.

6. Diigo

Social annotation service

Using ‘ii’ in your name is never a good idea. There’s absolutely no way you can talk about your startup without having to spell its name for people to actually find it on the web. When I search ‘digo’ (the most logical keyword to use when you hear the name), you won’t find it, but you will come across an internet phone service on the first page.

7. Heekya

Social storytelling platform

Whatever a ’social storytelling platform’ is, it doesn’t even matter if the name ‘Heekya’ doesn’t even refer to anything. I would love to see their employees pitch normal people about their service in plain English. And what’s with the dots above the e’s?

8. Insala

Web-based software for organizations implementing talent development, management, and retention initiatives.

Is this the name of a trendy salad bar? An islamic prayer? Or is it a synonym for Innovation, Customer Responsiveness and Focus, Employee Satisfaction, International Reach, Entrepreneurial Accomplishment and Rapid Growth? You guessed it, it’s supposed to be the last one.

9. Jiglu

Automatically creates intelligent tags for your web content.

While Jiglu on itself is already absolutely meaningless, painfully undescriptive and just not very catchy as a term, the entire product line is named after it: JigluTags, JigluHood, JigluMedia and JigluEnterprise. As if it was actually meant to create confusion about everything the startup produces.

10. Mzinga

Bbrings white-label social networks to consumer research.

Just like ‘z’ isn’t meant to be followed by a consonant, it’s better not to put it after a consonant, either. The word ‘Mzinga’ makes me think of an African warlord, or an exotic Hawaiian dance routine, but it certainly won’t make me go “Aha, that’s that white-label social networking site creator”. Gotta wonder how to came up with that one.

11. Oooooc.com

Provides a marketplace for contents and services.

Much like Zooomr and ooooj, it’s just too many o’s. How do they refer to their service? Worse, how do they point people to their website on the phone? “No it’s 5 o’s, c, dot c-o-m, sir … No no no, 5 times the letter ‘o’ … ah crap.” If you want to be the next-generation eBay, you might want to consider changing the name first, guys.

12. ooVoo

Attempts to add the human experience into communicating online with improved video and voice communication tools.

Same story as Yoono: it may sound pronounceable, but the fact that’s is so damn hard to remember the name and the spelling thereof doesn’t justify picking a two-syllable word. I mean, it sounds like an evil spell or a character from Star Wars.

13. SocialThing

Synchronizes your personal information, content, and friendships so that you can post this information across the social web.

It’s really hard coming up with a good name that starts with ’social’ anymore these days, but if you’re going to do it anyway, why pick something so blatantly generic as ‘thing’? It’s like they couldn’t figure out what their own product actually did, and they just talked about it as some ‘thing’ they were coding. Oh yeah, and the exclamation mark thing was very cool in the nineties.

14. Sclipo

Social learning network for teaching through video & webcam.

Say ’sclipo’ out loud. Enough said, right? It sounds like a name that’s been incubated by someone with a speaking disability. It reveals nothing about the product, which is fairly niche to begin with. Nada, zip, rien du tout. The only thing it makes me think of is the Roman politician Scipio.

15. CrazyEgg

Advanced analytics to track what your users are doing on your website.

This one, like Weebly, has some ring to it and with so many competitors it’s probably meant to stand out just a little. But CrazyEgg? Crazy. Egg. Sounds like they really wanted to have a logo with an egg in it and found out crazyegg.com wasn’t registered yet, so they just went for that name.

Did I miss any good, well, bad ones?

Let me know in comments what you think the dumbest name for a Web 2.0 startup is!

corporate identity, domain names, naming, naming your startup, naming your Web 2.0 startup, startup naming, web 2.0

111 Comments »

Belgian hosting company starts preregistration for new domain extensions

Written on 7th August 2008                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Gent-based hosting company Combell has announced preregistration for new top-level domains like .tech or .blog. By doing this, the Belgian company tries to make some money out of the millionaire sentiment surrounding the new domains. Imagine you manage to claim the .porno domain – you’ll never have to work again. Just sell domain names for a price that seems reasonable (or not) to you. According to Belgian news site IT Professional, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) called the plans “absurd”.

After its 32nd meeting in Paris in June, ICANN announced that it approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet’s addressing system. Yet a final version of the implementation plan must be approved by the ICANN Board before the new process is launched. It’s intended that the final version will be published in early 2009, so yes, it would be fair to say that Combell’s plan are quite absurd.

Though the ICANN should be thankful, as this “world-premier” from Combell gives the corporation a lot of attention. A somewhat funny announcement like the one from the Belgium company makes the news easier to spread.

€100.000 for your last name

So what will it take you to register, say, your last name as a top level domain name? Business Developer at Combell Tom de Bast told IT Professional that a customer needs around a 100.000 euros of start capital to buy a top level domain. Combell also asks potential domain sellers to prove they will be technically able to sell the domain names.

Brand-owners will be the first ones to get a chance to register their own top level domain name. De Bast expects cities to claim their name, like police.gent or post.gent. After that, everybody gets a shot. Including you.

Not just Roman characters

Combell will probably be concerned with the registration of Roman characters-based domain names. But that’s not all there is to it. “One of the most exciting prospect before us is that the expanding system is also being planned to support extensions in the languages of the world,” said Peter Dengate Thrush, ICANN’s Chairman. “This is going to be very important for the future of the Internet in Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Russia.”

Exciting indeed, the Internet’s addressing system will change radically. Combell is ready for it.

combell, domain names, hosting, icann, top level domains

4 Comments »

Registering a .me domain is quite an investment

Written on 21st May 2008                                                                                                              13 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Only two weeks to go before companies can register a .me name, the domain from the country of Montenegro. As you can imagine, this is quite an attractive domain. It creates some sort of personalized approach, even when it comes to world’s largest companies. Apple for example has registered apple.me, ipod.me, itunes.me, reports Networkworld. Trademark holders had the opportunity to register their domain names before yesterday. Other tech companies that profited from this rule – are amongst others – Microsoft, Skype and Digg.

What struck me, are the high fees of the .me registrations. Whereas a .com domain only costs you $10 a year, a .me domain will take 110 to 200 Euros per year from your budget. And there’s a catch too: the minimum registration period is five years. I wonder whether our sponsors will run for a domain when the costs are that high. Although Wakoopa.me and Fleck.me do sound good. And what about Netlog? Imagine somebody comes up to you and asks: “Tell me all about yourself?!”. A simple reply will be enough: “just Netlog.me”.

.ME, domain, domain names, Montenegro

13 Comments »

WashingtonVC: What’s in a name?

Written on 22nd December 2007                                                                                                              4 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur

It wasn’t Search.com that became THE search engine but Yahoo at first and Google later. Just as Amazon became the online bookstore and not Bookstore.com. Although a name is extremely important to any company you could say that online companies have historically been looking for the stranger names to build a brand on. Flickr, Del.icio.us, Digg, all names that need to be explained and aren’t very self-explanatory.

In general, companies come up with a plan or technology and then go and look for a funny and noteworthy name which, very important, is still available as a domain name. If it isn’t available they simple add ’ster’, ‘r’ or ‘le’ to the end and/or leave a few vowels out. The good news is that these domain-names can be registered for only a few dollars. The bad news is that these names then have to build into a brand which might take millions.

Venture Capitalist Mike Mann of WashingtonVC has a different approach. He invests in expensive but self-explanatory domainnames like Software.com, Phone.com, Graphics.net, RockConcerts.com and HappyBirthday.com. Once he has acquired these domains Mann, and his partners, come up with a business that takes advantage of the natural flow of traffic from people who want software and try getting it by typing ’software.com’ in their browsers and hope for the best.

Just last month WashingtonVC launched The Download Superstore (Guaranteed and Virus Free) on Software.com and a ‘Next generation full service telecommunications’ company on Phone.com. They had acquired these domains earlier for a rumored 7 million+.

Today DomainMarket.com and WashingtonVC announced the acquisition of VaticanCity.com, NorthernIreland.com, Angola.com, Cameroon.com, IvoryCoast.com, Mali.com, Namibia.com and Rwanda.com. They are planning on building a ‘nextgen geo specific portal with each domain we acquire focusing on the targeted region’s Business, Travel, Nonprofit, and Social opportunities’.

Some people will say that anyone willing to spend millions on a domain-name is out of his mind. But when you think about it it starts to make sense: you either spend nothing on a name and millions on marketing or nothing on marketing and millions on a name. But all that money you invest in marketing is just gone. It isn’t invested, it is spent. A good domain-name will likely only increase in value.

These entrepreneurs reversed the standard model of coming up with an idea and then a name. They focus on great domain-names and then try to build great companies based on that.

businessmodel, domain names, Michael Mann, phone.com, software.com, venture capital, WashingtonVC

4 Comments »