Many of you have asked us what Pingsta means, and since we can't resist the opportunity to tell a good story whenever the chance presents itself, here it goes...
The name "Pingsta" was born after months of caffeine-powered deliberations (caffeine is, as you might have observed by now, a big part of our life here). Pingsta is a combination of two words. The first word, "PING", is the acronym for "Packet InterNet Groper", a troubleshooting tool used to test IP network connectivity. Ping is also commonly used as a verb... "to Ping" meaning to "IM", call, email ( in other words, to contact) someone. The second word (well... half a word actually) is "Sta" - derived from the word "Star" as a subset of "Superstar".
As we set out to create an environment where technology enables people to communicate and collaborate seamlessly, we decided to follow that train of thought further, and it went something like this...
"This tool will help the world to 'Ping internetwork Superstars' (hmm, interesting)... 'Ping Superstars' (like it... but it's way too long)... 'Ping Star' (better! Now, how can we make it sound modern. Let's see... drop the "r" maybe?)... 'PingSta' (Eureka! we have a winner)."
/deka
P.S: Here are some other names that crossed our minds and the reasons why they were discarded:
- "Hubnob" (it initially sounded clever, but eventually reminded us too much of the failed Walmart attempt at re-creating Myspace)
- "Geekspace" (Myspace for geeks?... Boy, that sounded unholy!)
- "Citizen IP" (someone - who shall remain nameless - might have been watching a certain movie... Citizen Kane, perhaps?)
2 comments:
I have to say, when I first heard of Pingsta, the name sounded a little ridiculous. Though in this day and age, I've definitely learned not to judge a start-up by its name. On that note, here's a fun list of how some of today's top tech companies chose their names.
Speaking of names, Silicon Valley VC-heavyweight Pitch Johnson turned down the opportunity to invest in Yahoo in 1995 because he didn't like the name "Yahoo". He apparently said "who the heck would invest in a company with a name like Yahoo?". He mentioned the opportunity to his friend Don Valentine at Sequoia who promptly funded Yahoo with Mike Moritz leading the investment ;-)
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