iPod. iMac. iPhone. iGadget. You can even create your very own iName.

mySpace. myAOL. myMSN. myWebspace. myWay.

What is going on? We give an extra vowel (iVillage), then we take away another … wis.dm. flickr. or, even combine both the give and the take –> iStalkr.

and what’s with the extra ‘o’? hoooka? zooomr?

my, oh, my. When will we learn to share? This self-centered approach to domain-naming is quite puzzling. I can only surmise that it is a symptom of our increasing self-centeredness. My This. My That. I’m not sharing. I’ts miiiiine! I’ts almost like the web is increasingly being branded by overgrown children who forgot how to share.

Our window to the world is willingly shrinking to the size of an iPod screen as we disengage from the real world more often and stay indoors to ‘surf’. We seem to want to make it a personal experience, taking back what we gave away, by adding the word ‘my’ as a magic bullet to our increasing disconnect. I heard it best said the other day “You are your own best search engine: get out of the house and go out into the world and explore”

Amusingly, you can generate your own web 2.o company name. And here, an amusing essay deconstructing web 2.0 names. (Circle Four: The Cab Calloway is my favorite)

It’s all just