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qwerky is as qwerky does

qwerky is one of the best sites on naming that you’ve never seen. The proprietors describe their mission thusly:

This is qwerky, notebook of the weirdest new webapp names.

And a gorgeous notebook it is, an hilariously perilous stroll down the B.S. laden halls of Web 2.0 speak. One defining broken neuron that all Web 2.0 guru-hoohahs share is that their naming, branding and communication sensibilities are stuck in 1999. It’s still all about a short domain name, no matter how poor a name it may be.

Here are a few names from Qwerky’s list of sites currently in beta–stealth mode:

Diigo, Noodly, Gootodo, Renkoo, Woomp, Zoozio, Gliffy,
Colib, Tagsy ,Tioti, Otavo, Wrickr, Skobee and Flagr.

Notice the frequent occurrence of the “oo”? It’s unclear if the “oo” trend began as an homage (to put it nicely) to Google and Yahoo,
but the “thinking” behind Web 2.0 name “Squidoo” can be sloshed though here.

In any event, keep checking back in with qwerky- it’s good stuff. And while the names qwerky collects do not serve as good examples, they do serve as horrible warnings.

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4 Comments so far:

Thank you! I was really in awe of this site… because this one covers it all!

I’ve actually mentioned Squidoo previously… It must’ve been buried in the previous posts somewhere. :)

Comment by ia 02.02.06 @ 5:58 pm

one big reason for the wierd names is because you cannot find a .com domain in normal english anymore, unless you want to be a .biz or .net.

Comment by gman 02.02.06 @ 10:18 pm

ah, but the domain is never important- no more than a street address-that is the false premise. my-space.com would be just as successful as myspace.com. http://www.igor.com is not for sale, so we are http://www.igorinternational.com, rather than http://www.;sfdld.com

Comment by steve 02.03.06 @ 8:26 am

Yes, I agree with Steve.

Besides what’s on surface, often a company name can represent an abbreviation of some meaning, and especially nowadays a company name is also tied closely to domain name selection and availability, if the company wishes to have a strong internet presence.

Since practically all regular simple English domain names are already taken, to make a new site memorable and easy to enter the URL for users, one must use lots of creativity to brand a new company. We should give them lots of credit for that!

In our case, well, honestly, it’s “trial and error” while we tried to come up with a combination of names that may fit our vision. Of course, the domain name search! That’s one of the hardest parts of all…

Then, one day, “Diigo” popped up during one of our brain-storming sessions. It fits into our vision perfectly, and the domain name is available! Its abbreviation stands for “Digest of Internet Information, Groups and Other stuff.” Visually, the two ii’s also symbolize people in a community. Plus, an unique & easy name to remember!

So that’s how Diigo was born!

Diigo is about “Social Annotation”, a superset of social bookmarking. I would like to invite you and your readers to try it out. We’d love to have your participation and feedback.

Best,

-Maggie

Comment by Maggie 02.08.06 @ 1:30 pm

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