To Name a Website

At least three quarters of our cycles at GDK have been spent on a website that is currently in stealth mode. Naming this site proved to be quite a challenge.

Almost every interesting domain name as well as any domain name related to an interesting domain name has been taken. Since our website is in the celebrity gossip space, this is doubly true. Any domain name with the strings celebrity, celeb, gossip, or hollywood is taken. Domain squatting goes largely un-prosecuted and as such scooping up myriad domain names and selling them to desperate small business owners is a big business.

To drive home this point, let's examine the domain names of some of the major players in this space:
1) PerezHilton.com (The owner likely decided upon the Paris Hilton inspired pseudonym after hours of searching for a domain)
2) Celebitchy.com (Hey, at least it rhymes with something they actually wanted)
3) TheSuperficial.com (I actually like this one, the name vaguely articulates what the site is about)
4) wwtdd.com (Obscure Fight Club reference. At least the domain is short)
5) DListed.com (I have no idea what this is supposed to refer to) (ed note: This is a reference to a Kathy Griffin joke about not being on the A or B list of celebrities... she is on the D list. Keith should know this. Bad, Keith, bad.)

The list goes on. The point I'm trying to drive home here is that it requires some serious creativity to find a domain that a) conveys what the site is about and b) is catchy and clever.

After a few depressing hours spent looking up hundreds of would be company names, we finally decided to get serious and hosted a formal brainstorming session at Dan's house. Armed with a whiteboard and beer (to get the creative juices flowing), we started writing down every word or phrase that we felt our site was about. We then combined them in interesting ways and looked up the resulting expressions on the domain registration database. What did we find? Zip, zero, nada. Everything even remotely interesting was taken.

After sending emails to the owners of a few domains we really liked and being asked for 6 figure sums in return, we grew increasingly desperate. We started experimenting with creative misspellings of some of our favorite phrases. We quickly glommed onto the word "nooz". Nooz.com? Taken, of course, in 1997 no less. How about noozler.com? Bingo.

We like that "nooz" is a playful riff on the word "news", similar to the way that celebrity gossip is related to real news. The "ler" suffix allows us to brand around a concept that we like.

But best of all: noozler.com was available for domain registration.

First!

We've been talking about setting up a company blog for some time, and now that we actually have a company, an office and a product rapidly approaching private release, the time seems right to put proverbial pen to paper. But where to start?

How about at the beginning?

GDK got its start when Keith and I decided to leave our last place of employment on the same day. It was mid-afternoon, mid-week on a sunny October day, so we decided to grab a beer and enjoy the warm weather while contemplating our newfound unemployment. Having worked together at StubHub.com and FanIQ.com for a number of years, we knew we wanted to keep the tradition alive, but were a little hesitant to join another angel funded startup.

My previous two jobs had both been in the early stages of such companies, and let me be the first to say that inheriting an organically and rapidly produced codebase was not high on my to-do list. Luckily, Keith felt the same way.

I'd been kicking an idea for a website around in my head for some time, and after the second beer, it seemed like the best time to throw it against the wall for stickiness testing. Keith was into it and we decided to give it a go, if only to occupy the time until The Perfect Job Opportunity™ came along.

Meanwhile, another of my longtime compatriots was considering a move from his engineering job at StubHub. Gabe and I had worked together for the better part of a decade, beginning at Sigma6 Interactive Media back in Detroit. We'd remained close friends after moving across the country together, and somehow always wound up working at the same place. He'd also grown tight with Keith in our StubHub years, so when word got out that Keith and I were going to start something of our own, it was almost a fait accompli that Gabe would join us at his first opportunity.

As it turned out, that opportunity came quickly. Gabe decided to leave StubHub and officially completed our three headed monster at the onset of 2008.

Next up... the birth of Noozler and GDK Software Incorporated...