Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley? • Hacker News Board

Re: Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?

#11

Post by cstejerean » Wed, Sep 05, 2007, 6:16 AM UTC

kingnothing wrote: post #8

indie01 wrote: post #3

"Stupid" is such a subjective opinion. Individual brand-carving matters much more. . . immediate association is more relevant. These abstract names (wakoopa, frengo, squidoo) aren't really built upon any particular app of substance . . . it's a kind of reverse-branding that hurts in the long-run. Selling names works, but only a bit. Sooner or later, you have to sell substance.

Stupid can have objective qualities as well. For example, the three company names listed in the link title are stupid because you can't just say the name to someone without having to spell it out for them.

i've had this problem trying to recommend things to friends over a lunch conversation. I think part of the reason for the success of sites like facebook and myspace is that they had simple names that one could recommend to their friends.

Re: Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?

#12

Post by gscott » Wed, Sep 05, 2007, 6:45 AM UTC

gscott wrote: post #4

This reminds me from the Internet blowout a VC person investing in a company because of the name (I think it was liquidaudio). When it failed, all I could think about was that story and what possible qualifications that person had to be giving other people's money away.

And to find good 2.0 domains go here https://www.tdnam.com/trpHome.aspx?t=2

Click on advanced search, include only "Expired Domains" in your search

Here are some domains I found that are available now:

sharedlist.com $10, sharesix.com $10, mybangi.com $5 sharedbutler.com $5, retrobots.com $15, ixango.com $15 newsilicious.com $5, itsnotthenews.com $5, whynotlist.com $5, listandget.com $5, filterlist.com $5, tripslist.com $5, hotwomenlist.com $10, flicklist.com $10

Getting domains this way helps spark my imagination and more "idea rich" I feel in that if nothing else works out I have additional ideas I could work on.

Re: Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?

#13

Post by gms » Wed, Sep 05, 2007, 7:18 AM UTC

brezina wrote: post #10

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/200... The original LA Times and Seattle Times article mentioned Xobni and said, "Many names come with little context. Firms such as Xobni, Meebo and Squidoo give no hint of what they might do (e-mail management, instant messaging and online recommendations, respectively)." What? No hint of what we do? They should have talked to us. It's inbox spelled backwards…

re: inbox spelled backwards, I think to most people it's not exactly the most obvious thing in the world. But anyway, no matter. After all, do the words "Google" and "Yahoo" give any hint about what those guys do?

Re: Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?

#14

Post by wouter » Wed, Sep 05, 2007, 9:10 AM UTC

As one of the founders of Wakoopa, I know it's really hard to find a good name for your (internet) company AND be able to buy the corresponding domain name relatively cheap.

As people pointed out above, "Google" and "Yahoo" also didn't describe the service they are offering and also are not really pronounceable without spelling. In the end, it's all about the service the company is offering and we're pretty sure that we're doing okay in this department.

More here: http://blog.wakoopa.com/archives/whats-in-a-name

Re: Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?

#15

Post by brlewis » Wed, Sep 05, 2007, 12:53 PM UTC

kingnothing wrote: post #8

indie01 wrote: post #3

"Stupid" is such a subjective opinion. Individual brand-carving matters much more. . . immediate association is more relevant. These abstract names (wakoopa, frengo, squidoo) aren't really built upon any particular app of substance . . . it's a kind of reverse-branding that hurts in the long-run. Selling names works, but only a bit. Sooner or later, you have to sell substance.

Stupid can have objective qualities as well. For example, the three company names listed in the link title are stupid because you can't just say the name to someone without having to spell it out for them.

> three company names listed in the link title are stupid because you can't just say the name to someone without having to spell

Huh? Aside from noting "with a K" when giving the first name, I think all three of Wakoopa, Frengo and Squidoo are phonetically spelled. What would be a non-stupid name?

Re: Wakoopa, Frengo, Squidoo: Are Stupid Startup Names Hurting Silicon Valley?

#16

Post by oditogre » Wed, Sep 05, 2007, 3:00 PM UTC

sgraham wrote: post #9

This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the article about naming phones with cryptic numbers earlier. Random strings of vowels in non-words are just as memorable as KR344-a I'd say. Hmm, maybe I should register kr344-a.com just to be safe though.

And easier to spell, to boot. Many of these names would be hard to guess how it is spelled; I know if I heard of reddit by word of mouth and didn't have it spelled out for me, I'd be looking at readit.com or read-it.com wondering wtf was so cool about it. I have absolutely no trouble remembering xkcd.com, and it's just a random string of characters.