Be prepared for stiff competition from ZOMGFTWPOP.

We just wanted a simple meaningless name less than 15 characters that was impossible to mistype. We will be playing up the brands of the games moving forward. Most people just refer to the site as "Blockles" or "Balloono". The key will be to continuing to provide really great match-based games.

They talked about this a month ago with the new CEO, and it is an interesting move, but I wonder how much it'll hurt them from a branding perspective...

omgpop is definitely shorter and easier to remember than iminlikewithyou, but I wonder how far along do you have to be into your startup before it becomes hard to say how to get mindshare plus pagerank from an old name back? should be interesting to see the compete graphs: http://siteanalytics.compete.com/iminlikewithyou.com+omgpop....

does anyone know of any other startups that have done this successfully?

The SEO isn't a problem, although "branding" is more ephemeral.

I think it's a good move, personally. The site started off as a casual dating site and has gradually moved towards casual gaming.

"I'm in like with you" certainly doesn't make me think games, and "omgpop" works well for teenage girls, which is a good segment to target for casual gaming.

there is a way to transfer pagerank from your previous domain to the new one

A 301 redirect will typically pass most of it, except when it doesn't. (There are a variety of reasons why that could happen. Most involve automated filters designed to make the technique less effective to spammers. They're not perfect.)

What does the name mean? I don't see it on his site.

It's chat speak, clearly. OMG = oh my god. Pop is popular and happy.

It could also have been JAMLOL or KTHXBBQ, though http://ohai.com is taken by another company I'm looking forward to tracking.

Thanks for pointing out ohai.com. These types of start-ups are definitely worth tracking; I have a hunch they'll do very well. They provide a much more immersive and meaningful experience than MySpace, and also provide incentive (points) for coming back. On top of that, no registration is required to get started.

On the other hand, it's basically Yahoo Games repackaged for a younger, hipper audience... not exactly innovative.

There seems to be a lot of game sites coming out lately. I guess they all seem very much like kongregate to me. This one seems to be more focused on multi player though which is nice.

Wonder if they will go for traditional games like chess, pictionary, etc at all.

Whoa, is there really that high a proportion of cute girls hanging out online, playing casual games?

I don't know about cute, but a majority casual gamers online are female. Google "casual gaming female" and there are reports across several years. Some of them have the proportion as high as 70%.

If you dig further into the market research, though, you'll find that the majority of those are 40-something housewives in middle America. Basically the same population who watches daytime soap operas. Actually, I suspect the Internet casual game marketplace will kill the soap opera.

So no, there are not a bunch of cute girls on casual gaming sites. Most of the cute girls seem to be on TV fansites of shows popular with teens and 20-somethings.

not a bad name. They should have used my domain http://ombop.com !

What makes it a good name? Personally I think its pretty terrible. Does not mean much of anything, makes me think of a celebrity blog or something. The domain is hard to pronounce. If you don't use the OMG acronym its completely meaningless. Always amazes me when companies with millions in funding put their sites on such crap domains.

Some people on here are just outright ridiculous.

It's a website of poppy glossy Flash games for teenyboppers. How is this not a perfect name for the site and its demo?

Remind me how "ombop" appeals to teenyboppers... they don't meditate, and Hanson went out of style years ago.

I went to the local junior high around here and asked the girls hanging around to come over and I told them whether or not omgpop.com sounds awesome. They said yes. Then some school admin guy came over and told me to go away.

Did you ask about ombop.com, the name that this thread about?

Oh hey, I'm a tard with the grayed out texts.

I thought it was pretty clear that I was talking about "ombop.com" and not "omgpop.com." If you read only the first four words of my post, before accosting junior high girls, this would have been obvious.

Have you talked with any, or are you just guessing? For all you know they ran a targeted ad campaign and picked the highest converting product name for their target demographic.

That's what I'd do, at least as an input into the decision-making process.

That aside, having built products for teenagers, I think this name is totally fine. They all use txtspk and omgpop makes perfect sense in that vernacular.

I think omgpop.com is an awesome name, and I think that they're going to do very well.

I don't think that "ombop.com," what I assumed this sub-conversation was about (by virtue of replying to the post about it), is a good name.

Ah, ok! It's unclear what "it" refers to in the original response. In the OP "it" refers to omgpop, while in the first response it could refer to "ombop."

Anyhow, I agree with you.

> If you don't use the OMG acronym its completely meaningless.

I don't use that acronym and I knew what it meant.

How do you know it's crap? I think it works well if you're targeting teenagers. Maybe that's exactly what they're doing.

I think that's what the 30 something business guys who decided on the name would say.

google did pretty well out of a weird name

Google is easy to pronounce and does not have any slang acronyms. I wonder if they chose omgpop because lolgamez was already taken.

Brilliant name! Well played =)