Naming conventions for web-products... and the next fad

I had a fun discussion a few days ago with some coworkers about fads in the naming conventions for web products. It started because we were talking about the abundance of products launched in the last year or so with a missing "e". That all started with Flickr, but has continued to Flaggr, Wishlistr, etc. And a lot of Web 2.0 companies have also used new domains (instead of .com) to make interesting URLs, like del.icio.us or blo.gs.

Of course, this isn't just a Web 2.0 thing, it's a web thing. Why are Flickr, Flaggr, and their ilk missing the "e"? Because they all got used up by all the "eCompany" names in Web 1.0. Or the "o" 's got used up by Yahooooo, Goooogle, etc. And the "i" 's got eaten up by iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes, etc. Anyway, so now in Web 2.0 we're missing vowels.

Anyway, the point is that web names go in fads. So here's the next fad, Web 3.0. I decided on it today with some coworkers.

Web 3.0: Company or Product names made up of words repeated twice.

• cowcow
• fixfix
• toptop
• boxbox
  

you get the idea. we discovered that most farm animals make interesting product names when used in this way. they don't mean much, but they're fun to say. a lot like the names kicked out by the Web 2.0 Name Generator.

Time for a vacation

I'm exhausted. Work isn't the culprit, really, although it's always moving at 110 mph at Yahoo!. No, this time it's weddings. I thought I made it through the wedding season a few years back, but this must be "Indian Summer" or something. We've had wedding-related activities every single weekend since essentially the 3rd weekend of May. That's like 6 weeks in a row or something.

I'm totally worn out. And we're not just talking about the kind of wedding where you show up, drink some champaign, and take off. No, these are the kind where I'm helping out, standing up, or in charge of something, which means that every Thurs/Fri/Sat for as long as I can seem to remember recently are wedding-filled.

Don't get me wrong; I'm stoked for all my friends. I just need a vacation. Thankfully, it's very close. I have one more wedding this weekend, and then I can take a break. Can't wait.

Digital Sneezing

This is a phenomena that my co-worker, Matt Fukuda, noted yesterday, and he's totally right.

Just about everybody in my group has a Nokia 6682 camera-phone. It's a cool phone, but basically just a basic camera phone to most folks. The cool thing is that it can run lots of next-generation application, like Zonetags, which was put out by Yahoo! Research Berkeley. Zonetags makes it a one-click step to upload camera-phone pictures to Flickr, and also figures out where you are physically in the real world, and adds that information as a tag. Very cool.

It means I put up a ton more photos on Flickr, and also means that I just take a lot more pictures with my phone. Since everybody on my team has this phone, and we all have zonetags, we're all always taking pictures of things. Pictures of each other in embarrassing situations, pictures of each other at our desks, pictures of what we're working on, pictures of buildings, pictures of just about anything.

Here's where the sneezing part comes in. When I see one of these guys take out his cell phone to take a picture of something, I get mine out, pretty much unconsciously, as if *I* should be taking a picture of whatever it is too. And it's not just limited to me. If one person gets out their camera phone, the whole group suddenly has their phones out, and are taking pictures. It's just like when someone sneezes, and a bunch of other people suddenly need to sneeze. What gives? Bizarre, frankly, but entertaining.

And of course terribly geeky (someday it will be totally hip). At a swank Japanese restaurant last week, Nihon (Y! Local info), we were about 10 minutes into appetizers and suddenly more than half the table had their phones out and were taking pictures. of everything. everything. so geeky. so ridiculous.

but so entertaining. and of course the photos are fun to look at the next day, too.

This is just wrong

This site "christian social networking site", ChristianVibes, at least according to TechCrunch, is related to another site called "SmutVibes", which is like MySpace, but actually encourages pornographic photos.

If they really are the same company, that's absolutely ridiculous. Or rather, it's brilliant, assuming you're just trying to use one platform to target two very different constituencies. But there's something offensive about it as well. It would be like having an "anti-gun" site intended to attract the eyes of anti-gun advocates, and using the resulting revenue dollars to run the NRA site.

doh! delete isn't the same as edit

I deleted a comment today by accident, when I was trying to respond. and unfortunately, 360 doesn't give me the option to "undelete", and didn't give me a confirmation dialog. I thought it was standard practice to get confirmation for irrevocable actions?

Unconditional consumer love of Google

For those of you who don't religiously follow the internet industry (what's wrong with you?), TechCrunch is one of the best tech blogs for just keeping up-to-date with recent internet news, and for a quick analysis of new products, and it's relatively evenly delivered.

This article today vents about a lot of the "halo" effect Google seems to enjoy, even when they release products that aren't necessarily life-changing. But somehow everyone thinks they are.

I have huge respect for Google, and actually love the fact that having healthy competition has really benefited consumers (note Gmail and Google Maps). But seriously, the products aren't really "better" than other products out there, or if they are, it's marginally. But people have a love affair with the brand.

As a Yahoo!, it's annoying. I'm sure if I was a Googler, though, I'd be reveling in it, and laughing at folks like at Yahoo! and MSFT. Guess it just provides a nice challenge to those of us without the home court advantage of unconditional consumer love.

Building products fast

I'm giving a talk tomorrow to whatever Yahoo!'s want to hear my $.02 on how to build products quickly. I titled the talk "Building products fast - cutting through the red tape... but not really... but really", in reference to a line from Dodgeball. Quite appropriate in this case, because some of the "red tape" can be cut (ignored, reclassified, avoided, etc), some you can reduce with a little elbow grease, and some you have to deal with. But a lot of folks, myself included at times, get bogged down and end up letting ourselves think that it's the organization's problem, and stop taking the responsibility to just get the job done.

But I digress. Much more important is that while typing up the presentation (which I kept very light-weight, to give more time for discussion), I accidentally wrote a rhyme. Can't really call it a poem, though. That would be demeaning to the art-form. But a rhyme nonetheless. Here's what I wrote.

If your engineers are stuck, so are you.
If your designers are stuck, so are you.
If anything is stuck, so are you.
If you are stuck, your product is too.

Funny that it rhymes. But very true.