How Brave Should One Be To Name a Startup Goofy?

Svetlana Gladkova
08/19/2008

What’s more, it is not simply Goofy, it’s actually squared Goofy! Honestly, I think even simply “Goofy” is bad enough but to name your startup Goofy squared is beyond my understanding.

But no matter how unbelievable it is, I have bumped into a startup named Goofy² today. And even though the idea and performance don’t deserve a post here (or anywhere else, to tell you the truth), the name they’ve chosen definitely deserves to be mentioned at least once, especially since they have not managed to get any coverage from the blogosphere except for their peculiar promotion techniques on Twitter.

So Goofy² (why do I keep smiling when I type that) “is a service for you and the world to share and discuss about anything through short posts and comments with rich media embedment”. The startup is from China (which must be obvious from the short description already) and the product is basically intended to serve as a micro-blogging tool (yes, yet another one) with threaded replies to talk to people. For a change the timeline here is offered in two columns and the latest messages from people are shown along with the replies they’ve received from other users.

Unfortunately there’s nothing else to review here - you follow people, you update your status with “ideas” and you discuss these ideas with other users and that’s about it. Well, maybe I should also mention multiple application errors that prevented me from actually doing anything or conversing with anyone - but that’s just natural for a beta, I know.

The only other thing that deserves attention in this startup is the way that they are trying to promote it via Twitter. The team uses multiple Twitter account that all link to Goofy² from their bios and the only thing the accounts do is follow hundreds of people to hopefully get some followers back and some click-throughs to their service. And since this was exactly how I myself arrived to the homepage, it proves to be not the least effective promotional technique (even though I have to admit that I am naturally inclined to click just about any link that contains “beta”).

I highly doubt that the world really needs another service that enables you to “brainstorm on things with colleagues” in public - or any other Twitter clone that lacks in functionality and performance. Besides, I believe that the way that they promote the service is annoying at the very least and hardly efficient as well. But if you are looking for a new place to escape Twitter that looks very much like it has no future and at the same time has a name that promises to goof up everything they do, this must be just the service to try out.

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