ennovy.org

Where have all the vowels gone?

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

A lot of Web 2.0 sites have domain names without the letter ‘e’ in them. For example, Flickr. Blogr. Zoomr. Splashr. Wishlistr. Grupthink (well, this one is without the ‘o’). Stocktickr. Delivr. Snipplr. It’s a trend I don’t quite get.

Now there’s a new site called Twttr which I’m guessing is “twitter” with the vowels taken out. It’s a service where you can keep track of your friends using text messaging. I think the domain name looks horrible! Note: I haven’t really looked around the site yet, I’m not saying that the service itself is horrible. It looks interesting!

But hey – it is to do with text messaging – and people don’t type up full words on text messages all the time – so perhaps the domain name is appropriate.

Random

12:22am

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Comments & Trackbacks

1. Tyler Hall said:

on Jul 19 2006 @ 01:32 AM

“It’s a trend I don’t quite get . . . it is to do with text messaging?”

I’m one of the people behind Snipplr (one of the many voweless websites out there). I thought I’d shed some light on the origins of our name…

Our original, internal name for Snipplr was “Caffeine”. The idea being that caffeine is fuel for coders, but that was way to generic. So we web-two-point-oh-ified it into “Kaffeen.” That lasted for a day until we realized how silly it looked.

So, we brainstormed for a couple hours thinking of what to call our service. “Snippler” was suggested, but we didn’t think we could possibly go for it since it sounds dirty. (s nipple r!)

In the end it grew on us since it has a nice ring to it. Pretty soon the Web 2.0 police knocked on our door and told us we were required to drop the last vowel or else we wouldn’t be listed in Technorati.

So that’s where Snipplr came from. But what about all the other strange Web 2.0 spellings? I think there’s two reasons. One, it’s currently a hip trend started by Flickr. Two, all of the “normal” domain names are already taken. For example, flicker.com (note the ‘e’) has been taken since 1998. You’ve got to spell creatively if you want a short domain name.

2. Steven Sundheim said:

on Jul 19 2006 @ 05:44 PM

I would echo Hall’s statements.

My hunch is that it comes down to domain name availability and trademark protection. I know that in our case we would have rather chosen a name that needs no explanation for spelling, but Grupthink was really cute and had all the other qualities we were looking for. (“Groupthink”, by the way, refers to an undesirable “conformity” effect in group decision-making, and we liked the irony).

For a domain name, “Deliver” is probably much more valuable than “Delivr”, but I’d guess a name like that isn’t affordable for a startup. Plus, if your new site becomes wildly successful, the spelling becomes an afterthought. Remember that company that misspelled “Googol”?