When MySpace got bought for $580 million, I thought it was pricey.  Then I thought it was a bargain.  Now I wonder whether or not it will survive.  A lot has been made of the future of the largest social network.  Some people say that social networks have a natural limit to their size, because they cease to become cool at scale.  Others think that they'll never be monetized well, because monetization means overcommercialization. 

Will MySpace die?  Maybe, but not because it's fundamentally impossible to sustain a social network online.  I think there are some keys to sustainability for any social network needs to follow to last, and frankly, I'm surprised the networks we've seen so far do such a poor job at minding them.  They're not groundbreaking by any stretch, and frankly, I think they're pretty obvious.

Don't shoot yourself in the foot...the site has to work.  Friendster crumbled under the weight of its own initial viral success.  It didn't throw nearly enough servers and bandwidth at their early problems and the site became nearly unusable at peak times.  It really surprises me how often MySpace pages don't load or when features don't work.  It's not enough to be crippling, but it is something to watch.  If YouTube doesn't have this problem serving all those videos, MySpace shouldn't, figuring as much of the content comes from YouTube and Photobucket anyway.

Keep the bad guys out.  This is really the Achilles heal of MySpace.  Probably about 3/4 of the friend requests I get are from fake people.  Mass invites from bands are one thing...at least those are driven by actual humans who might actually have something legitimate to offer me.  The sexy webcam stuff I could largely do without.  It's always from blondes anyway, and I don't really like blondes.  :)  Filtering spam shouldn't really be that hard to do.  Part of it comes from defensive messures like sender flagging, but some of it is in the design of the site.  Facebook does a great job of keeping the rifraff out by keeping communication within networks of people.

Be the best a what you do best.  YouTube was the first to flash and had the most link dense UI, therefore, the best technology for streaming, discovering and having your videos discovered.  They still are.  LinkedIn has great tools for maximizing the value of your network, even if the site is boring and they don't do a lot of the contact management I'm looking for.  What is MySpace's core strength?  Self expression?  That job is outsourced to the freelayoutosphere.  Music discovery?  Music discovery is sort of accidently social on MySpace...land on a friend's page, hear their music.  Tools like Pandora and last.fm represent the cutting edge in music discovery and last.fm provides a very rich social dataset that could drive powerful and addicting applications on MySpace.  MySpace would benefit from innovating around this core functionality or integrating with a partner.  Popping the player out of the page and and allowing user radio stations and multiple groups in one player would be a start.

Drive usage through usage.  Despite the uproar, I think Facebook's mini-feed feature was brilliant.  By providing information on what your friends are up to, particularly because these are people you know, it drives more interaction through data exhaust.  MyBlogLog does this quite well.  People stop at my blog, they leave tracks, I get curious, I click, I'm on their blog, they click back to me or leave me a message.  Without trying, I wind up using the service more and more at each sitting.  This is what gets people sucked in and continuing to use the site, because it turns the experience into a living and breathing thing where things are going on that you don't want to miss. 

Commercial must be functional.  Brands are not my friends so if I'm going to friend them, there's got to be a compelling reason for it.  Whether it's to get digital assets like ringtones, or event dates, you need to improve my experience by adding commercialism, not distract from it.  Going deeper than just friend requests would be great. I'm friends with Casino Royale on MySpace, but that hasn't gotten me anywhere yet.  I couldn't even yank the trailer for display on my page.  It hasn't driven a ticket purchase yet...no ringtone... Kind of superficial relationship actually.   

Promote users. YouTube is becoming a place to get discovered.  MySpace has Cool New People.  del.icio.us had the /popular list.  Even Typepad has a blog of the day.  People want to see their name in lights, and they'd like a reasonable shot at stardom that feels like its in their grasp.

Communicate openly with users. One thing I loved about being on the VC side was the access to the creators of a web service.  When I didn't like something or I wanted to request a feature, there was someone to tell, someone who would tell me its in the works or why it can't or won't be done.  Craig Newmark accomplishes this by dedicating himself nearly fulltime to customer support and letting someone else run the business of Craigslist.  Facebook has a blog without comments and MySpace has Tom, who most people don't really believe is really a person...  at least you don't see him commenting on a lot of random profiles.   This is a difficult thing to scale, but I think it's very powerful.  I want to hear from the founders what they're working on, how they're solving problems, etc.  That makes me more patient and makes me feel like I'm being listened to.  Without open lines of communication directly with the staff, people give up and go somewhere else.

I hope MySpace does survive, because their tendency towards openness and scale have a lot of untapped potential, and I'd hate to see it die on the vine.  That would make advertisers take social networks, and the power of consumers, less seriously.

If you've never clicked through to my blog from RSS and seen my avatar or if you don't usually play around with him, today is the day to click through, up and over.  We just released some functional skins and I'm featuring what we're calling the FAQ... its like a little audio profile.  Now, you can get a whole bunch of scenes in the same avatar.  Sweet!  This way, you can keep the avatar as an audio introduction, but also have a daily message that gets changed.

Ok, so the worlds of finance, tech and probably to a lesser extent politics are still boys clubs, but I like to point out when my favorite gender makes some noise.

Found two cool new female bloggers...

A video blog on finance called Wallstrip hosted by Lindsay Campbell.  She's still looking for a "booyah"-like catchphrase, but Jim Cramer should still be watching his back.

Ashley Cecil paints politics and other newsworthy items... literally.  I'm really tempted to buy the Bubba painting...  Gotta love that little stubby thumbs up he gives...she's captured it perfectly. 

Also, BizDev2.0 is going to feature some very successful women in technology...  Catherine Levene, formally of the NYT Digital and now working with TheFind.com, Tina Sharkey, SVP of AIM and Social Media at AOL, and now a late addition, Zia Daniell Wigder from Jupiter Media.

Now if we could only skew the 90/10 boy/girl ration in the audience.

Some people think this stuff doesn't much matter, but for me, getting perspectives from a wide variety of people is one of the reasons why I blog and participate in these communities.  I hope we can see more of this in the future.

Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me.

I think I'll go Google someone on Yahoo! now.

I love the lunch date... always have. It's casual, it's public, and it has a clear beginning and an end. No matter how bad it is, it will end in an hour and you're going to get fed either way. In dating, downside protection goes a long way. 

So, it's really struck me that no one has ever built a dating/social networking service around lunch or other work location centric stuff. I've had a lot of wacky ideas in the past, but this is one that has been bouncing around my head for a while that I might seriously consider putting some time and effort into. So if this is interesting to you, please do not just go off and steal it...I may want to help. 

Searching people by where they live really doesn't capture where they spend their time, particularly in a metropolitan area. For most people, five days a week, they spent at least eight hours a day in one spot...more time then they probably spend at home. 

Lunch dating also connects people along a different line...food. Finding a great place for lunch by your office is a big win, not to mention finding someone else close by who also likes Pakistani vegan organic pizza. 

You could branch out from lunch to include coffeeshops, the gym, happy hours.  This taps into what the keeps the Facebook strong...offline connections.  When you friend someone on Facebook, you see them in your English class.  Here, you could bump into someone at your local Starbucks.

The business model taps into the highly soughtafter local advertising model. Not only could restaurants make offers to local customers for specials and discounts, but think of all of the other things you could advertise to single people when you know where they work, what they do, and know a lot about their preferences. It's a goldmine of metadata. 

So here are some of the rules and features I think the service needs to have: 

First, I think you roll this out city by city, starting with New York. 

Profile creation should be easy. You should be able to pull photos in from URLs, or automatically from Flickr, Facebook, Photobucket, etc. You should also be able to suck in your music, movies, and personal interest data from these sites as well. 

The professional information should be pretty comprehensive as well...maybe a LinkedIn integration. You should be able to put in that you are a trader versus a portfolio manager versus a broker...not just "Finance". 

Outlook/calendar integration... Remember, these are office people. Plus, we'd need people to be able to say that they'd rather eat at 12 versus 2. Scheduling, and the limits people have on lunch, are important criteria. 

Privacy...people should be able to tell the system exactly where they work and be searchable, but not have all that info show up. So, if I find someone "two blocks away" I don't really need to know exactly where that is. 

Let the venue owners own their networks. Each restaurant should have a page which becomes its own social network. Maybe you work with a Seemless Web or someone who has channel penetration there to allow people who favorite or friend a restaurant to get special deals or vote for specials, etc.  Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and New York Sports Club could be major contributors to the site here in NYC.

What do you like to talk about at lunch? Work? Work off limits? Politics off limits? A few cues about what makes for a good lunch topic might go a long way. 

So, is this a completely ridiculous idea?  Think it will fly?  What else does it need?  I'd love your feedback.

UPDATE:  Itsjustlunch.com is not a competitor here.  This is a website that you join for free that is advertising supported.  Its Just Lunch costs you hundreds of dollars for an expert to match you up with someone... very different service. 

Wait... so Yahoo! is still developing its bookmarks offering?  WTF?  Seriously...  WTF?!  They're even going to integrate the y! bookmarks into its search.  Do you really want search results mixed in with the bookmarks of Yahoo! bookmarks users or would you rather it be del.icio.us users?  That's like asking someone who has a BetaMax machine to record this week's episode of Lost.

A lot of people think that Yahoo! is such a great place for startups to wind up, but it seems to me that Google, more so than Yahoo!, actually integrates its acquisitions.  Urchin became Google Analytics.  Keyhole became Google Earth.  Flickr and del.icio.us became...  Flickr and del.icio.us, in-house competitors to Yahoo! Photos and Yahoo! Bookmarks. 
It's really unfortunate that we haven't seen more integration.  Hopefully, NewsCorp will do more with Digg.  Kinda sucks that Digg is going to fetch between $100-150 million...  del.icio.us is so much more fundamental of a platform for search.  Eh...  hindsight is 20/20.  Sometimes you hold on and you wind up with a YouTube, and sometimes you wind up with a Friendster.

So, you'll notice, if you're on my page, four new additions to my sidebar...   a Yahoo! Avatar, a WeeMee, a Meez, and a Zwinky.

We have competition, and if I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist, Voki will pretty much suck...  so instead, I'm embracing them.  Welcome to my blog.  What's that you say, guys?  Oh.. you didn't.  Nevermind.  ;)

So here's my quick take on them...   My Yahoo! Avatar is doing Tae Kwan Do at a school gym.  You might not know this, but I am, in fact, a blackbelt in TKD, and I practiced at Fordham so that's what's going on there.  He's cool... looks nice.   I wasn't a fan of the creation interface there... lots of options for everything... not a great way to sort through them, so admittedly, I just picked some of the first stuff I saw. 

In general, I guess my big issue with all of these pictures is that I'd like to do something more with them.  Pictures on my blog don't do a lot for me...  almost everything else in my blog is interactive in some way.   

So my WeeMee is feeling sort of Bond-like...  so I've got him in London with a martini and a suit.  Cute.  The WeeMee interface is really easy...   very quick to create.

My Meez looks very slick...   When I was creating him, he was awesome... he swung the bat and I could even put him in a flying car if I wanted.  I'm not sure why he's not moving now.  I thought he exported in an animated GIF.  Either way, he's not up to much now and that's kind of disappointing, even though he looks really cool.  UPDATE...  I missed the animated export... now he moves.

Now, my Zwinky is built in Flash, so I expect him to do more than blink, but again, not much going on there.  Plus, apparently, they have a thing against bald guys...  bald was not an option, so I might just take him off on principle.  Not only that, you need to install a search toolbar to get him...   He's been built by IAC to generate search traffic and I hear he does a good job of that, making him very profitable for them.  Good for him, but that's not really what I want him for.  I don't think you'll see too many updates from him, because I don't really want the toolbar.

So there you have it...   now there are five Charlies staring back at you on my blog.   

I find myself talking to a lot of people about why I blog, why they should blog, what a blog is, what it isn't, etc...  I'll be doing that a lot more this spring as I'm teaching an undergraduate class at Fordham on the professional uses of blogging, social networks, and using discovery tools.  So, I decided to write a series of posts outlining the basics of participating in what's going on online right now...  from the why to the how. 

Most of the regular readers here already get this stuff, but this is the kind of post you give to your friend who doesn't blog, or to your boss who doesn't understand why your company should be blogging, or people who still have 1 LinkedIn contact or who don't use RSS.  This first post is for all the people I encounter who don't get blogging.   In future posts, I'll cover other important tools, like RSS, del.icio.us, and LinkedIn.

The word blog has been so overused that people are sort of immune to it now, thinking they know what blogging is all about and whether or not it is for them.  Here's the best way I can describe blogging "slightly professionally" to someone who doesn't get it.  When I say that, I mean that I blog about what I do because I'm passionate about it and want to connect with others in my field.  I don't do it as part of my job or specifically to pitch and sell products.

It's like a big industry cocktail party with an open bar.

1) So, first off, no matter what industry you're in, you can always fill a cocktail party given an open bar.  There are millions of blogs out there, so chances are, even if you're a clam shucker, there's a clam shucking blog out there for you.

2) Everyone is a little buzzed...a little loose.  That means they're feeling comfortable enough not to put on a front and willing to say something provocative every once in a while.  Plus, bloggers are usually  open to chatting it up with just about anyone.  No wallflowers here.

3) You can try to talk to everyone, but you won't remember any of the conversations or the people...best to find a handful of people you actually like connecting with and give them a little more time.  Start out reading a handful of blogs, giving thought to what they have to say, and commenting before you drink from the firehose.

4) Listen, don't wait to talk.  People focus too much about what they're going to say in their blog, but if everyone went into this party itching to get something said, it would probably be a pretty obnoxious, self centered crowd.  Try actually being interested in what the other person has to say first.

5) The conversation will stray.  Just because you're at an industry party doesn't mean that all you talk about is your job.  These are all people with interests, hobbies, passions...making for a unusually well rounded crowd.  So, if you're going to chat internet marketing with someone, you'll probably enjoy it more with the guy who also rockclimbs like you do.  And, chances are, in a crowd of web marketers, that person exists.

6)  Why would all these people be interested in what you have to say?  Well, they wouldn't, but that's not really the way you approach a cocktail party is it?  I hope not.  You don't stick your head up and shout over the crowd...you try to circulate among the crowd and sometimes the conversation sticks and sometimes it doesn't.  That's a good thing, though.  You only want the people sticking around who share interests.  You don't want bunch of people who feel obligated to read your blog but never have any useful response because they have no idea what you're writing about.  You don't need to talk to, and its almost impossible to talk to, 100 people at once at a cocktail party, and the best conversations are usually between two or three people.  Don't worry about your traffic.

7) If you don't like sharing your personal life, I'm sure that's not going to be a problem.  If you want to write about all your bad first dates, that's fine, but that's not the kind of blogging we're talking about.  Similarly, that's more the kind of conversation you might have at the after party, not in front of this industry party with your boss, your best client, and potential next client.

8)  Meet people that are going to help you enjoy the party, not people who you think you need to meet.  First off, the industry notables are going to get mobbed at a party like this, and they definitely do in the blog world.  Second, they're often not the most interesting people to talk to.  Don't you just get kind of sick of the way people fawn over the who's who?  Treat everyone like a who.

9)  Like a cocktail party, what you do outside of the blogging is a lot more meaningful than within the blog.  Some people are a lot better at working a party than they are at their actual job.  At the same time, though, I think you're a little bit limited in how well you can work a party if you aren't passionate about what you do, work hard to stay on top of your industry, etc.  That's going to show through at a cocktail party, and a blog.  People who "mail in" their jobs also tend to be boring bloggers and worse party guests.

10) And finally, following up after the cocktail party is how true networking comes to fruition.  Being a blogger who doesn't respond and interact with their audience is like a person who takes a lot of business cards and never gets in touch with people afterward... it is sort of a waste of everyone's time.

Recruiting is a big industry.  People pay a lot of money to get the right people because the right people are key to your business.  That's why a number of attempts have been made to leverage the power of social networking and recommendations to disrupt the hiring model in the job space.

I've never passed on a job any more or any less because of monetary incentives...   I do it for social capital.  If I actually know the right person for the job, I pass that job on to create social capital with both sides, and for some reason that resonates with me more than the money.  Actually, I think it is because I'm guaranteed social capital, whereas the money always seems like a crapshoot.  If I pass you on a job, even if you don't get hired, but you're good...  and the job was right for you.. .you think of me as a resource and so does the person doing the hiring.  I make social capital that way.

Anyone building one of these systems should take that into consideration.  What good does passing the job on through your system do me if I don't get paid?  Can it help build my reputation as a connector?  How do you enable me to store social capital?

Assuming Yahoo! gets some kind of a deal done with Facebook (can you say motivated buyer?), we will have had three billion-plus acquisitions on the web (Skype, YouTube, Facebook) in the last year. 

So what's next?   Who has the best shot of creating a billion dollars of value?

At first I'd say Craigslist, but I don't really see Craig ever selling.  Perhaps he wakes up one morning and decides it needs a safe home just in case any pissed off New York real estate scammer vows revenge, but, regulatory albatross aside, I think its much more likely he'll "give it to the people" and maybe go public or something.   

LinkedIn?  I'm not sure they engage users along enough dimensions...  it is too much of a business tool rather than the go to social network for adult professionals.

What about  Revver or Spotrunner?  YouTube got sold because they dominated the medium and Google thought they could figure out how to monetize it.  What if these two figure out the monetization first and attract publishers and advertisers....  might be a necessary add-on... but maybe not for a cool billion?

Feedburner is dominating and monetizing a medium, with little competition...  if and when RSS takes off, they could start making bank in a hurry.

You know what would be interesting... and something I would definately monitarily contribute to the production of?  A virtual stock market for startups.  I need something to do in the fantasy baseball offseason.  I'd love to be able to buy and sell "shares" based on the predictive expectations of the crowd.  That might be a very cool experiment.   

Any other ideas for the next billion dollar acquisition on the web?   I don't think it will be us.  Our number is only $750 million.  :)

Pretty reasonable I'd say...  We're not all raving lunatics in the consumer world, you know.  Thanks to Jeremy for the heads up.

Please bottle some water from your house and send it to me.

Hair clippings for me to wear as a good luck charm will also do.

Some people just have the magic touch...Google, Paypal, Yahoo!, and now YouTube, which just got acquired by Google.

We don't really need more money, but if you want to throw a token investment our way, I'm sure we could make some room for you in the cap table somewhere.

I don't really know what to make out of this deal.  Google has the money to spend, and I think this is a better investment than putting up municipal wifi towers up.  What else could they spend it on? 

The upside is that this is a foothold into our video/tv viewing experience and the associated ad revenue.

The downside is that they haven't proven that they quite understand how to do community yet. 

What's fascinating to me is that, at the time of the del.icio.us acquisition, they were "split internally" on whether to make an offer.  How they managed to spend a billion six on such a big question mark is beyond me, just from a decision making point of view, whether or not its a good idea.

It’s as if your id had a typewriter. In a world where everything is
instant, the delaying and censoring mechanisms that contributed to a
civilized life are gone." - Maureen Dowd, NY Times, Oct. 7, 2006

(I don't subscribe to Times Select... or get the actual paper copy, God forbid... my friend Alicia sent this to me.)

So Sevin Rosen says that the market for venture is so bad that they don't think they can make "venture" returns, so they're not going to raise another fund.

And now everyone's flipping out about the changes in the VC market and whether or not there's overinvestment or lack of opportunities.  Chill out.  Seriously. 

Sure, there are a lot of problems people can point to in the venture market, but these guys aren't even playing in the same world as the VCs that get talked about in the blogosphere for their high profile internet service investments.   They're a bunch of hardware guys whose very long and successful careers, like the infrastructure opportunities they chased, are winding down.  They've made a lot of money, and rather than try and figure out how to build the next Google,  Skype, YouTube, they're letting another generation tackle a new generation of completely different opportunities.

This is the experience and focus areas of the firm's partners:

industry veteran of over 30 years.... semiconductor, telecommunications, and nanotechnology

in the early 1980s... was CEO of two high-technology companies...semiconductor and software industries

nearly 20 years as an executive at wireless carrier and service provider companies

joining Sevin Rosen Funds in 1983...

worked with three venture-backed companies in industries such as enterprise software, flat panel display and semiconductors

focuses in areas of imaging, computing, photonics, RF communications, and Semiconductors

director of               Capstone Turbine Corporation, a public microturbine manufacturer

taken a lead role in nurturing... a pioneer in the optical               transmission market

worked with companies in the integrated circuit and solid-state industries...spent 30 years at Texas Instruments

20 years in the semiconductor and networking industry

Chips, networks, displays...  we've got these things now, thanks to guys like the partners at Sevin Rosen, but that's not where the new opportunities are.  The opportunities aren't in the hardware that move the bits faster and faster...  they're in the services that make the bits useful... that capture the bits, organize them...   pair them with other bits for exponential value creation.

To even put companies like YouTube and Facebook in the same article as Sevin Rosin's decision is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  You might as well say that all the medical device investors should retire, too, because investing in purely web based businesses is about as different than investing in chips as you can get.  That's like asking these guys to do genomics.   

Venture is not venture is not venture.  It matters a lot what industry you're in.  It matters what stage you play in.  It matters what geography you invest in.  I've written before that I don't even think that what is commonly lumped together and called venture capital shouldn't even be called a single asset class, but the media, and often limited partners as well, misunderstand these kinds of investments.  Sevin Rosen's departure from the scene shouldn't be taken as anything more than the nail in the coffin on hardware investment, and maybe perhaps a remark on the Texas market...  not an "industry" signal.

Personally, I don't know if Apple is ever going to relinquish their stranglehold on portable music. Their penchant for cool design and easy of use is difficult to match. However, if history tells us anything, hardware has always been a bad bet for maintaining margins and competitive advantages. The further up the stack you go, the higher the margins and more difficult it is to unseat you.

And in today's world, data is at the top of the stack, not software like iTunes. iTunes may have made it really easy to get people set up on the iPod, but its not what keeps them there. The critical mass of artists in the music store keeps them coming, but it seems to me that its only going to get easier to buy music from more sources in the future, not harder. There's nothing really that sticky about it, actually. No data, no network. I've been switching players a lot, actually.

So I thought to myself, why doesn't Apple buy last.fm and really ramp up the social network features? Scrobble everyone and provide social music functionality right there in iTunes. It would b like when AOL announced that they were building a social network on top of AIM. They already had all my friends and I didn't even have to do anything.

Imagine a MySpace competiter that already knows what music you listen to and on day one tells you who has similar tastes, on top of recommending who you should listen to. Plus, because iTunes is actually selling a ton of music, the company has the leaverage to actually get bands to start setting up camp on their last.fm artist pages. iTunes and the iPod spit out a ton of data that their software doesn't use effectively at all, and last.fm has a really neat application to make the most of that data. What if Apple made all of those little last.fm widgets their own little try and buy mini iTunes stores? I think they could get last.fm at a reasonable price relative to the kind of value they could add to it by integrating it with their hardware and software. Seems to me like a natural fit.

 As if you couldn't have predicted this when I joined...   Oddcast is now blogging!  Check out CEO Adi Sideman's first post.  I'll be adding posts from time to time as well.

I like this insert a map feature, and its sort of disturbing that I can insert a bird's eye view of the street I grew up on.  So Bill Gates has been watching me by satellite this whole time, huh?

Facebook has a new ad model...

"The new Sponsor Stories ad unit will initially be placed in the third position within each user's News Feed - as either a small banner-like placements or video clip. When users elect to click on these ads, their entire network of friends will be automatically alerted and then given the chance to interact with that particular marketer's group."

Something tells me that if Facebook users didn't like it when others were notified when they left a note on someone's wall or added a friend, they're not going to like it when everyone can tell they clicked on an ad for Bad Credit, Victoria's Secret, or GMHC.   This just sounds really... weird.

So we're having some serious issues naming our upcoming consumer product.

We came up with three names.   One that is related to our company.  One that I made up that was inspired by something a naming consultant gave us.  And then one that the naming consultant came up with.

One name is Oddpal.   I don't know why we didn't come up with it before.  It is so obvious, but it was never on any of our lists.

So I circulated the name around in an informal survey:

"Oddpal – don’t like it, hard to remember"

"Oddpal makes the most sense but is boring."

"Oddpal - u said u own this one but out of the three i wouldn't pick it it doesnt seem catchy enough"

"

Ok, so that's out... or is it....

"I really liked Oddpal because it's cute and I can see someone saying like, "Did you get your Oddpal?" lol its cute"

"I think because this is so new and people who aren't as tech or new-media saavy as say, you and I are, they can relate more to this name. It's an explanation of charachter or product. It's your pal. Essential, your pal who is going to lead you through the site. That's my take on it. "

So, it isn't fancy and it tells what it is... but maybe it is too close to Sitepal or not catchy enough.

So, then I came up with a totally made up name and this was the response:

"Cool idea - nice combo of word smithing. I would rank this at numero 2, on my favorite scale. There is a ski company that has a similar name, but I think this one could be fun and is completely separate from the Oddcast name. It def stands out and you almost have a back-story/history for your character just solely based on the name alone."

"love it! its catchy u right away think of vocals and there could be like a cute lil *** character or characters could be named ***'s which is also really cute and i would totally make one"

"sounds like fun, irreverent, spunky."

Awesome!   Score one for me!

Or not...

"sounds like an item on a sushi menu. I don't like this word"

"Simply not like it...I guess it sounds weird..."

"– dislike it. Looks like a Russian word and not sure how to pronounce it."

Then we had a third word that everyone loves.... everyone who is a 12 year old girl...

"It could work if you were skewing this to more of the younger tween generation. I think that could get a nice buzz. I mean we are talking about the youthful generation that went from Barbie to Bratz Dolls"

"it's cute"

"too cute, too toddler, too tickle me Elmo"

"adorable"

"there's something feminine about it - i just can't imagine most guys wanting to say "oh yeah, i'll leave a message for you on my ***"


Great... so, we're kind of at square one.  I think Meez and WeeMee and these people have pretty cornered the market  on Me words...   

Does it even really matter?

You know, part of me thinks of the name that I created as like a Chrysler 300C.  A lot of people, including me, don't like it, but just as many people love it.  Maybe you need a brand that illicits a strong reaction either way.  Would someone really not use a product because it has a name they don't like.

And does the product have to describe what it is?  For every Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Wordpress there's Skype, Google, Yahoo! and Napster...  names that have nothing to do with the product.

Throw on top of that the fact that namesquatters...  scurge of the web that they are, have pretty much covered almost ever prounouncable word in the english language.  Just mash your fist onto the keyboard and try and secure the domain name of the random letters that came out.  I guarantee you it is taken.

Ideas?

I love the little popup blog posting thing from Performancing... but 3/4 of the time I click Publish, it doesn't do anything.... I click and I click and I click...   nada.   Plus, I really dislike forums that require me to login.  I don't want to register to be able to get tech support.

Click click click.  Dammit.   Select.  Copy.  Typepad.  Login.  Paste. Publish.  *smacks head*