What’s up with all these missing vowels?

Flickr was originally intended to be Flicker but the domain name for the website was already taken.

”We thought about some alternatives and then decided to just drop the e,” said Stewart Butterfield, Flickr’s chief executive. ”It’s a little more distinctive than a generic name.”

I guess Flickr’s popularity must’ve inspired other web 2.0 startups to omit vowels from their brand names.

• Socializr – Share events with your friends
• Steekr – Your secured online space
• Skrbl – Easy to share online whiteboard
• Filedropr – The place to drop your files
• Delivr – Create free photo greeting cards
• Frappr – The most social maps on the Web
• Stagr – Design your own clothes
• Zooomr – Universally the best way to share, search, store and sort your photos online
• Blogr – Your space for photos, videos, podcasts and your blog
• Talkr – Letting blogs speak for themselves
• Coastr – The social guide to beer
• Flagr – Bookmark the Real World
• Suprglu – Piecing your web together
• Calcr – Online calculator
• Phixr – Online Photo Editor
• Gabbr – A social news community
• Nabbr – The #1 Video Widget
• FeedBlendr – blending RSS, Atom and RDF feeds into a single river of news!
• Grazr – Make any website better

Some of these sites are quite new so it doesn’t look like this thing is going out of fashion any time soon…