I think an interesting study would be to see how some websites become famous even though the names have nothing to do with what the product is about... and how others (like pets.com) fail...

amazon.com
google.com
snopes.com

I can't think of any others at the moment..

I know this isn't really a soapbox topic but I didn't want it to be in chit-chat...

Basically how do these become famous if they have nothing to do with their content? easy to remember? and why then is there such a big deal with domain squatters and such if sites don't need to have a meaningful name to be popular?

[Edited on February 6, 2007 at 7:36 PM. Reason : ]

2/6/2007 7:30:56 PM

yahoo

this should be in the Lounge or TT, if you don't want it in chit chat....

2/6/2007 8:57:30 PM

slashdot


[Edited on February 6, 2007 at 9:01 PM. Reason : ]

2/6/2007 8:59:56 PM

slashdot

2/6/2007 9:00:31 PM

did i mention slashdot?

2/6/2007 9:01:27 PM

sames goes for any sort of product: wii

descriptive or predictable names are boring, they are confused with other things, and they sound generic

2/6/2007 9:12:05 PM

slashdot is a reference to /. , the root directory on a unix system. It's a bit obscure, but it's definitely a legitimate reference for a website with the tagline "news for nerds, stuff that matters"

2/6/2007 9:25:03 PM

^ i disagree.

I think its the way to escape a "." character in a regular expression.

2/6/2007 9:26:23 PM

you're wrong, but either way,

Quote :

""It's a bit obscure, but it's definitely a legitimate reference for a website with the tagline "news for nerds, stuff that matters"""

still applies

2/6/2007 9:33:01 PM

theonion.com

2/6/2007 9:33:30 PM

Quote :

"www.clownpenis.fart Trust, an important part of building a family, and an important part of building his future. That's why I rely on Dillon/Edwards and Company. For nearly a century, investors on Wall Street have trusted Dillon and Edwards with their financial future. And now all of the resources from America's oldest investment firm are available on-line. Dillon and Edwards on the Internet, at www.clownpenis.fart. A lot of investment companies rushed onto the Internet, but Dillon and Edwards took their time. Sure, when they were ready, there was one web address left, but it's one you can count on. "

2/6/2007 9:44:07 PM

Quote :

""Slashdot" is a sort of obnoxious parody of a URL. When I originally registered the domain, I wanted to make the URL silly, and unpronounceable. Try reading out the full URL to http://slashdot.org and you'll see what I mean. Of course my cocky little joke has turned around and bit me in the butt because now I am called upon constantly to tell people my URL or email address. I can't tell you how many people respond confused "So do I spell out the 'dot' or is that just a period?""

http://slashdot.org/faq/slashmeta.shtml#sm150

2/7/2007 8:40:36 AM

its not as simple as that... the name isnt all that kept it going, if i remember correctly pets.com wasnt that solid of a bus. and they had stiff competition from a lot of other sites. while these were able to innovate and carve out a niche, which then lead to their names become household names.

2/7/2007 8:54:00 AM

slashdot is for faggots

2/7/2007 9:02:17 AM

http://www.dogpile.com

2/7/2007 9:03:21 AM

www.penny-arcade.com?

Or is "penny arcade" an actual term that has to do with gaming/computing?

[Edited on February 7, 2007 at 9:13 AM. Reason : hmm, mixed up my crazy code]

2/7/2007 9:12:50 AM

^it's a reference to arcade machines that mostly take quarters

2/7/2007 12:16:19 PM

Quote :

"A penny arcade can be any type of venue for coin-operated devices, usually for entertainment. This included early forms of pinball and fortune telling machinery of the 1930s. Vending machines may also be considered in this category. The name derives from the penny, once a staple coin for such machines."

I think they said it's named that because they were offering "cheap thrills"



[Edited on February 7, 2007 at 4:53 PM. Reason : I'd like to buy a vowel.]

2/7/2007 4:53:19 PM

http://www.whorepresents.com
http://www.penisland.net
http://www.cummingfirst.com
http://www.speedofart.com

[Edited on February 7, 2007 at 5:27 PM. Reason : k]

2/7/2007 5:24:14 PM

Amazon.com got a lot of press in the dot com boom. The stock soared to an outrageous price even though the company had never turned a profit which was the source of a lot of news coverage. When they finally turned a profit one quarter it was news worthy again. They also patented "1 click shopping" and sued Barnes & Noble. This all created a buzz around Amazon which turned it into a household name and put them on the map as a leader of online retailers.

So, their success hinged on a lot of factors. There is no single thing that made them what they are today.


Google is just a catchy name that people remember. Google, Yahoo!, Alta-Vista, Lycos, etc. all needed something that people would remember in order to build their user base. Google's advantage came because they built the best search engine. Catchy name + slightly better service = Number 1 search engine.

Snopes.com - Thank goodness they were the first to offer a lot of content, because I haven't been impressed by much of anything else there. The name, the layout and design, etc. all sucks IMO. It's much better now than it was a few years ago though.

2/7/2007 5:49:52 PM

^google was a mispelling of googol, as in the number, which one of the creaters was a big fan of, snopes came from a family name.

2/8/2007 12:32:54 AM

Quote :

"Basically how do these become famous if they have nothing to do with their content? easy to remember? and why then is there such a big deal with domain squatters and such if sites don't need to have a meaningful name to be popular?"

The brand makes the name, not the other way around. The name takes the place of the underlying word after a while -- as "Googling" now means "searching the web," and in real life, "Kleenex" is tissue paper. Xeroxing, anyone?

Still, I think some of the more successful startups in the new wave have great names. Youtube is a brilliant name. So are Digg and Reddit. Wikipedia was a decent name, but then it was supplanted by its umbrella company, Wikimedia (a reuse I love).

Skype is questionable in English, but the founders are swedish and danish. They get some leeway. It'll be interesting to see how their new gig, Joost, fares.

Oh yea, I love Swivel. Cool site, cool name.

There is general consensus in the startup community that names don't particularly matter, but it has been taken too far. In Telecom there are names like Jajah, Zing, and Fring popping up. One interesting new startup recently is a music search site (with voice recognition) called Midomi. Who can remember that? Mimodi, Midomi, huh?

Quote :

"slashdot is a reference to /. , the root directory on a unix system."

Slashdot was, by the way, incorporated under the colorful banner of Blockstackers, Inc. for a long time (it may still be, but the whole gig is a subsidary of VA).

Let's not forget the well-named sister site to Slashdot, Everything2 -- literally, a directory of everything. It was social networking, crowd-sourcing, and encyclopedic knowledge online long before Myspace, Digg, and Wikipedia deconstructed the concepts into their own acquisition targets.

Personally I'd like to see a trend in "retro" naming for web startups. Names that parody traditional, stodgy brick-and-mortar companies. For example, "American Web Services General." Complete with retro "industrial" logo, of course.

[Edited on February 8, 2007 at 3:03 AM. Reason : dept of redundancy dept]

2/8/2007 3:03:11 AM

http://www.speedofart.com

Not sure I want to know, but I loled

2/8/2007 7:52:07 AM

google makes perfect sense as the name of a search engine...

2/8/2007 8:41:04 AM

newegg.com
brentroad.com
xanga.com
wikipedia.org
yahoo.com

...are just a few that I don't understand. If someone could shed some light on the names of those domains, please post them.

2/8/2007 9:36:04 AM

Quote :

"wikipedia.org"

"Wiki" is just a term for a document that the users themselves can edit. For example, a programming team in a corporation might have a process document that is edited by the programmers as new processes and procedures are created.

So, it makes perfect sense that "Wikipedia" is an encyclopedia that can be edited by the users.

2/8/2007 10:57:47 AM

^ yeah, but as far as I know, the use of Wiki for user-editable documents came after Wikipedia popularized the "wiki-anything" craze.
but according to Urban Dictionary, "wiki wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian, so "Wikipedia" would be like a quick-encyclopedia, which it is.

The slashdot argument was closed (i was wrong) when clalias posted the response from the founder. The joke was supposed to be if you wanted to tell someone the URL of the website, you would have to say "h-t-t-p-colon-slash-slash-slash-dot-dot-org"

and again, Google is a reference to Googol, which is 1 with 100 zeros after it (10^100). The Googleplex, where google is headquartered, is a reference to the number googolplex, which is 1 followed by googol zeros (10^googol or 10^[10^100])

2/8/2007 11:40:23 AM

Quote :

"History Wiki Wiki sign at Honolulu International Airport Wiki Wiki sign at Honolulu International Airport WikiWikiWeb was the first such software to be called a wiki. Ward Cunningham started developing WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on Internet domain c2.com on March 25, 1995. It was named by Cunningham, who remembered a Honolulu International Airport counter employee telling him to take the so-called "Wiki Wiki" Chance RT-52 shuttle bus line that runs between the airport's terminals."

Quote :

"According to Cunningham, the idea of 'Wiki' can be traced back to a HyperCard stack he wrote in the late 1980s. In the late 1990s, wikis were increasingly recognized as a promising way to develop private and public knowledge bases,[citation needed] and this potential inspired the founders of the Nupedia encyclopedia project, which later became Wikipedia. In the early 2000s, wikis were increasingly adopted in the enterprise as collaborative software. Common uses included project communication, intranets, and documentation, initially for technical users. Today some companies use wikis as their only collaborative software and as a replacement for static intranets. There may be greater use of wikis behind firewalls than on the public Internet."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki

2/8/2007 6:06:21 PM

Quote :

"slashdot is a reference to /. , the root directory on a unix system. "

You mean /

Quote :

"I think its the way to escape a "." character in a regular expression."

You mean \

2/8/2007 7:59:54 PM

yeah, it will always be s/^slashdot\.org$/i to me.






[Edited on February 9, 2007 at 1:10 AM. Reason : teh geeksauce]

2/9/2007 1:06:57 AM

Quote :

"brentroad.com"

the original url was ncsu2y.net (no longer functioning). Jake and Joe registered for thewolfweb.com and at the same time there was a special on two url's and since the brent road party still existed back in the day, they also took brentroad.com

now youngin's like you don't understand brent road since the party has been killed.

2/9/2007 1:39:09 AM

Don't blame us.

2/11/2007 3:17:08 PM