In the old days, it was common to add an e- as in email, hence eBay, eGroups and eTrade. With the growth of the Internet, i became a popular prefix, particularly for hardware, with things like the Apple iMac, Compaq iPaq and the i-Opener. Today, according to The New York Times:
The Web is awash in sites that begin with that most personal of pronouns, and not simply MySpace. A few quick clicks will connect you to MyCoke, My IBM, My Subaru, MyAOL -- even MyClick, a mobile-phone marketing company. Collectively, they amount to a new world of Web sites designed to imply a one-on-one connection with a corporation or large business.
The story says:
The "my" prefix has become an easy and increasingly popular shorthand for suggesting that bond between consumers and corporations. Matthew Zook of ZookNIC, a business that analyzes domain names, said domains that start with "my" more than tripled between 2005 and 2008, to 712,000 from 217,000. According to the government's Patent and Trademark Office, the number of trademark applications to register marks that include the word "my" increased to 1,943 last year from 382 in 1998. Through March of this year, the number of applications has soared to 530.
Jay Jurisich, creative director of Igor, a naming and branding company in San Francisco, suggests Microsoft may have played a part with its use of My Documents etc in Windows 95.
So the big question is: What will become fashionable in the future?
Mr Jurisich said he had toyed with "exo," as in "outside," but said no client went for it. Said Ms Zalis, "In the very near future, it's not going to be about 'my.' It'll be 'we.' It'll be the collective 'me,' whatever that is."
Any suggestions?
