What’s With Web 2.0 Names?

I must say, Web 2.0 is full of surprises and amazement in terms of marrying different technologies to come up with new web functionalities. Promoting and marketing these new breed of web applications requires a lot of planning and thinking. Naming the Web 2.0 products is one of them. And this is where Web 2.0 had achieved something totally unexpected and out of this world wide web world.

Website naming used to be a simple function directly related to the product or theme surrounding the product itself. For example, if you are building a website that talks everything about cars, you would rush to register www.cars.com. A little different to that, someone who wants to feature videos that he doesn’t like on the internet would register something like www.stupidvideos.com. I can spend one whole day on these examples but I think you already get what I mean.

Some smart guys saw an opportunity to make lots of money just by registering domain names belonging to big names who were slow in adopting the internet then, and then sold those domain names to the companies, who were in fact holding the trademark of the names. Cybersquatters were laughing all the way to the banks until one day the law came down hard on them… that was sometimes in 1999 when Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act was enacted in the US.

Now let’s say, hypothetically, there was no law banning cybersquatting. What do you think would have happened now?

While a lot of people benefit from the new ways web applications are created and presented to the masses in this Web 2.0 era, cybersquatters will definitely regret they were in the trade. At least that’s what I think anyway.

How do you think those cybersquatters expected some weird names, some had even called it stupid, like www.pytagor.com? You would be forgiven if you thought it is about Pythagoras’ theorem or even python, that large non-venomous snake. Pytagor is an online desktop and web collaboration solution.

Again, I can spend whole day here too explaining the eccentricity of Web 2.0 names, but with names like Xuqa, Thoos, Nowsy… you should get what I am trying to convey.

The cyber squatters must have been thankful to the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, forcing them to venture into something more legitimate like web hosting and domain registration business, for if not because of that, they would probably be registering some stupid names like Ghaa, Yooowt expecting to be picked up by some Web 2.0 startups who have named their products Ghaar, Yooowtxyz… or whatever.

And just in case you have not read about someone ranting about how stupid some Web 2.0 names are, check it out at The Next Big Web Thing Hall Of Internet Shame.

Enjoy your reading!

I am off to check out if some surviving cybersquatters had registered www.xyz#%$&^#.com for my… ahhhh… never mind.