After glimpsing a news story on yet another tech company that drops the "e" if the ending sounds like the word should end in "er" ( I say sounds like because, after all we cannot really know since some of these are made up words), I thought and googled: whats with these tech company names dropping the e?
It turns out, I am late to this party as well. Others have duly noted this strange phenomenon among tech companies. This trend caught on way back around 2006-2007 when flickr was making a name of itself and consequently led to some witty responses on the grammatical deficiencies of similar tech companies.
More specfically, it's not just the letter "e" that is being dropped from textual contention. All vowels are targets. I have never heard of some of these before: Pluggd, Talkr, Anothr.
This article shows how way back then, the domains for the proper (assumed) spelling were hijacked, leading unsuspecting surfers to the wrong website (wrong, you know, because they weren't looking for them).
But this blog post really captured my thoughts on this topic (and would have made my witty attempt to write on this topic seem even worse). Given the trend of dropping the e, this blog author makes some funny predictions on what to expect next:
flattr.me – A social networking site for people in need of praise.
transfr.me – A job site to find new positions within the organization you work for. It will be bought out by a telephony service provider selling switch boxes.
pestr.me – Ties events in your Outlook or Google calendar into your Gmail and social media accounts and uses these to bombards you with reminders.
GetOvr.me – A post-break up site to deal with exes who won’t leave you alone
See the rest on his blog.
Thanks for the link, Gabriel. Glad these fake sites on my blog could give you a smile.
ReplyDeleteMost likely has to do with marketing and making the brand name more memorable. Will stop when there's too much of it.
ReplyDelete