The myth of social media–the problem with social media names.

I hate cute names. Always have. Foodie. Hottie. Webby. There’s a new breed out though that’s upping the cute stakes: Web 2.0 sites. (Hey, just cuz I use a lot of this stuff doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about it.) I’m not talking about names like Ebay, Facebook, Amazon, MySpace, Google or YouTube either.

When those first came out, they may have sounded odd, but at least they still seemed plausible, like you’d heard the name somewhere before: Google’s and their insider programming reference. MySpace, Facebook and YouTube both hinting at what their sites did for you by making a human connection, using words like My, Face and You. Amazon as a name messed with your expectations of rivers and hot jungle life—or really tall blondes. Or both.

But cute wasn’t something I ever thought of when I heard those names.

And while at first glance an e-commerce site like eBay may not look like the same thing as a social site like MySpace, the lines have blurred. Even though it occurs online, what’s more of a social experience than shopping?

Likewise, how many sites where ‘friends’ hang out to share clips and photos are in a race to build critical mass and then sell out to the highest bidder, and oh, by the way, flood its users with ads. (Yeah, nothing e-commerce about that.)

Regardless though of what type of site we’re discussing, most seemingly odd-sounding names work because eventually you get used to them—as long as the business model works and the brand sticks around long enough.

But for every Yahoo!, Flickr, or Safari, you now have a Tumblr, a Flurl, a Plurck, or a Bebo. (A site like Flock though escapes scorn and ridicule—barely—just because the name gives you the sense that people could gather there in some kind of online flock.)

The real 800 lb. gorilla though is the likes of Twitter and its spin-off helper apps twhirl, tweetscan and Twitterrific.

The naming conventions for some of these sound almost like a George Carlin skit. “Twitter is based on a bird theme ... your updates aren’t really updates. No, they’re ‘tweets’ because, well, that’s ... what ... a ... bird ... does. I talk to you in person ... but I tweet you online.”

A name like Twitter just screams cute. Which is a shame because name and flawed programming architecture aside, the idea behind it works: A global IM service with the world sharing its thoughts and links at nearly the same moment.

I hate telling people I know about the service though because the name is, you know, (the C-word). I’ve used it enough to say I like it, don’t get me wrong, and I even get some cool links to funky stuff because of it, but I don’t see myself ever getting past bird metaphors.

A ‘Plurck’ though? Seriously. Seriously. Plurck? It’s one thing to make people learn your name rather than change to conform to their expectations. (Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to change his name when he first came to Hollywood, deciding instead to force people to have to learn how to pronounce it.) It’s another to come up with a name that makes people wonder too much about just what the hell it means.

Shouldn’t they be thinking about and using the product instead?

With the rapid proliferation of so many Web 2.0 apps, sites may not also be around long enough to learn some of those names either. Admittedly, I have zero scientific proof beyond an Alexa chart to back up the Cute Name Theory™, but Google, MySpace, Facebook and YouTube sure seem to be more popular than Squidoo.
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