Let’s say you happen to be looking for a roommate in London. You’re in luck – Ruumi, a new UK-based start-up, will help you to find one through an Airbnb-like crowd-sourcing website.
Or what if you want to simply “review” other people the same way you might review a restaurant? Then there’s Peeple. Or rather there might have been Peeple. The Canadian woman who was looking to launch the app looks to have axed it in response to the backlash – from people – it generated.
What’s perhaps most notable about the two ideas _ both of which made headlines recently – is not the services they seek to deliver, but rather their names. They stand out, and not for good reasons.
Websites, apps and online services are increasingly adopting strange names, or strangely spelled names, and it’s unfortunate for those who would like to see the sanctity of the English language and the spelling of its words preserved.
Whether it’s Ruumi or Peeple, or Lyft, Shyp, or even Flickr, Tumblr and Nuzzel – or closer to home, the UAE’s Guiddoo or Egypt’s Kngine – technology companies are butchering the language. Even Google, started in 1998, when the web was young, is a misspelling of the word “googol”, or the number one followed by a hundred zeros.
Even worse are companies that are making up entirely new, bizarre words for their names. Kaggle, Zynga, Choozle, Foodler, Shodogg, Bawte, Mibblio … the list goes on.
Compare that with the relentlessly mundanity of the names of the biggest American companies a half-century ago: General Motors, Armour, International Paper, and American Can.
This is not the modern companies’ fault. Aside from the age-old challenge of trying to think up a catchy name and brand, start-ups today face the additional 21st-century problem of having to come up with something that isn’t already taken online. And that’s a near impossibility with the amount of cyber-squatting going on.
Here’s a fun exercise: Think up 10 names for a new business and then look them up to see if the domain names are available. Chances are, they aren’t.
Here’s another fun one: Take a week and think up 10 more, then look them up. Once again, those names are more than likely to be taken, probably by someone who spends all their time thinking up word combinations and registering them. They’ll gladly sell you the domain name you really want, for a handsome price.
Stories abound about companies paying a lot of money for domain names. The US chain Toys R Us paid US$5.1 million for toys.com in 2009 and Apple paid $6m for iCloud.com in 2011, both of which pale compared to the $35.6m paid by the California-based marketing company QuinStreet in 2010 for insurance.com.
Many jurisdictions have rules against cybersquatting, or profiting from someone else’s trademark by purposely registering domains that another company may want or need. But that doesn’t really apply in cases where someone has simply thought of a potential business name first.
It’s here that this becomes more than just a pedantic complaint about spelling. It’s also a real problem for start-ups. Many don’t have the time to think up names for their businesses and products that still vaguely fall within the realm of English, or the money to pay marketing agencies to solve the issue for them.
It’s a problem that plagues even the most successful ventures. Twitter, when it started in 2006, called itself Twttr. The company was able to buy back the vowels and thus its full domain name from cyber squatters only after it got some traction in the marketplace.
Some efforts to fix the issue have arisen. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the California-based organisation in charge of managing domains, routinely approves and releases new extensions, but it’s not an elegant solution. Nobody really wants a dot-io, dot-airforce or dot-blackfriday as part of their website name.
Regional and country-specific domain extensions – say dot-ae, dot-jo and dot-ye for the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and Yemen, respectively – are considerably more available, but they can be off-putting to people in other countries. Companies seeking to do business globally are under inescapable pressure to get a dot-com name.
E-commerce enablers such as Shopify also offer tools that generate business names for you. Simply type in a word you want to include and voila, you get a list of available domain names that include it. It’s a functional option, but again, it’s not elegant or creative.
You might be better off spending your time thinking of how you can mangle vowels or drop letters to get the name you really want, much to the dismay of the English language.
Peter Nowak is a veteran technology writer and the author of Humans 3.0: The Upgrading of the Species.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
The Facility’s Versatility
Between the start of the 2020 IPL on September 20, and the end of the Pakistan Super League this coming Thursday, the Zayed Cricket Stadium has had an unprecedented amount of traffic.
Never before has a ground in this country – or perhaps anywhere in the world – had such a volume of major-match cricket.
And yet scoring has remained high, and Abu Dhabi has seen some classic encounters in every format of the game.
October 18, IPL, Kolkata Knight Riders tied with Sunrisers Hyderabad
The two playoff-chasing sides put on 163 apiece, before Kolkata went on to win the Super Over
January 8, ODI, UAE beat Ireland by six wickets
A century by CP Rizwan underpinned one of UAE’s greatest ever wins, as they chased 270 to win with an over to spare
February 6, T10, Northern Warriors beat Delhi Bulls by eight wickets
The final of the T10 was chiefly memorable for a ferocious over of fast bowling from Fidel Edwards to Nicholas Pooran
March 14, Test, Afghanistan beat Zimbabwe by six wickets
Eleven wickets for Rashid Khan, 1,305 runs scored in five days, and a last session finish
June 17, PSL, Islamabad United beat Peshawar Zalmi by 15 runs
Usman Khawaja scored a hundred as Islamabad posted the highest score ever by a Pakistan team in T20 cricket
SCORES IN BRIEF
New Zealand 153 and 56 for 1 in 22.4 overs at close
Pakistan 227
(Babar 62, Asad 43, Boult 4-54, De Grandhomme 2-30, Patel 2-64)
The specs
Engine: Dual 180kW and 300kW front and rear motors
Power: 480kW
Torque: 850Nm
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Price: From Dh359,900 ($98,000)
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Pathaan
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