ON GOING FROM THE BIG "GYM" THREE TO THE BIG SEVEN

PICK SOME LETTERS OUT OF THE BAG

OK, so Om Malik wants to abstain from the Big Three Internet companies for a week, a la Seinfeld in the famous "Master of my Domain" episode.  He says:

"...lets admit it, whether we hate them, or we love them, we do love to talk about them. Them being Google, Yahoo and Microsoft aka GYM. What would happen if the blogosphere decided that we would not talk about the Big Three for a whole week? Instead we shifted our focus on the little guys, interesting technologies, and some other important stuff. Can the blogs exist without talking about the GYM?"

To which Dave Winer offers his own game:

"Richard MacManus talks about The Big 3, and there is a trend to think about three companies -- Google, Microsoft and Yahoo -- as the leaders in online.

But I don't think that really works, because well, there are three more that are probably just as powerful as the others, but in different ways. Who are are they? Why don't we make this a game. For 15 points each, which three companies are also leading?"

So of course he's adding three out of four biggies that I think could be added to GYM:

1. AOL:  You could go with either A or T (Time Warner for a little while anyway) as the letter to add to GYM.
2. eBay:  So we get an E, lower case as it is.
3. Amazon:  Another vowel, yeaA!
4. Apple:  regular readers know I've certainly talked about them as a biggie...so another A.

That gives us seven letters...which gives me the idea to propose my own game:  SCRABBLE.
Out of either:

1. GYMAAAE or
2. GYMAATE,

What's the longest word you can make?

I'll start off with a word that probably represents how some brand-spanking new Web 2.0 start-ups might think of our list of SEVEN Web 1.0 biggies:

GAMEY

Any other words that come to mind?  You can use either of the two "bags" of tiles above.

Comments

[Brad Feld]

Boy, I sure do hope I get credit for GAMEY - http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2005/10/web_20_-_buildi.html

[Brad Feld]

Boy, I sure do hope I get credit for GAMEY - http://www.feld.com/blog/archives/2005/10/web_20_-_buildi.html

[Michael Parekh]

"TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

I hereby officially agree to share my Scrabble points for GAMEY with Brad Feld (see above comment)."

Brad, I guess gamey minds think alike?
:)

Thanks for the pointer to your post.

Michael

[rando]

Personally, I like "GooHoo" which is google + yahoo, which to their credit, are really the only pure plays in the list.