10 worst (and real) web app names

by Brad Linder Jul 16th 2007

The folks over at Read/WriteWeb have put together a pretty compelling list of the 10 worst names for web 2.0 sites. All are real web services, and all are really bad names, for a variety of reasons.

Here's a snippet of R/WW's list.

Fairtilizer is an online music community with a bafflingly unattractive name.
Agester - how many sites must add a -ster to their name?
Profilactic is a site that aggregates feeds, but we had to read the description a few dozen times before we could pay attention to anything but the site name
iStalkr creates a stream of data from your RSS feeds including Digg, Flickr etc that you can share with others. But it's got a kind of frightening name, not to mention the me-too omission of the letter "e."

Sure, it's hard to come up with a good name that hasn't been used before. But is it really that hard? What are some of the poor excuses for a name you've run across in your Web 2.0 wanderings? And what new names would you give to the services above or other cool web sites with unfortunate names?

Tags: agester, fairtilizer, istalkr, profilactic, web 2.0, Web2.0

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

hnkelley said 5:14PM on 7-16-2007

Wait... You get down on istalkr for the 'me-too omission of the letter "e"' (which I agree with you on) but not for the me-to INclusion of that cursed 'i'?!? What are you, a fanboy? I'm so SICK of the whole ithing!

Neil Cauldwell said 5:14PM on 7-16-2007

Fairtilizer is a real stinker

Robb Topolski said 7:57AM on 7-17-2007

Back when the web was young, when the O/S did not include network, dial-up, or web applications, one of the leading products was "Internet in a Box," including a Winsock dialer and Spry's version of the Mosaic browser that it licensed.

Along with i- and e- names, the appendage of "-in-a-Box" has kinda stuck, too. Search google for product|products "in a box" and there are hundreds!

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