Last week, TechCrunch launched a forum section on their site. So I took the opportunity to ask for feedback on Profilactic.

Although we didn't get a ton of comments, the one thing that most posters had a problem with was the name. Personally, I am pretty pleased that the name is the only thing that people think sucks.

Here is what I posted in response:

"Come on, Curtis, admit it -- you had to Google "prophylactic" to get the proper spelling. :)

Seriously, though, there is a chance that someone could confuse the real word with our made-up one. However, a lot depends on how people hear about it. Because we are unknown, it is going to be through blogs or word-of-mouth.

If you read it in a blog, the spelling thing is a non issue because you'll be following a link.

If someone else tells you about it, they probably won't leave you hanging on the spelling. I remember back when I was telling everyone about Flickr (or even Zooomr or del.icio.us). Those sites required spelling help (i.e. you always had to say "Flickr with no e") in order to find them and they did alright for themselves.

In fact, of those three domains I just mentioned, only delicious.com points to the proper site. Flicker.com and Zoomer.com were already taken (and I assume lead to some of the naming choices).

The one thing we have noticed when talking to people about the site is that they will say "like Profile with actic at the end?" So we do have "profileactic.com" as well.

As I've said in other posts, the name could turn out to be a big hindrance or it could turn out to be something that people really remember as more and more of these types of services roll out this year. Hopefully it is the latter."

If you wanna chime in on the thread, here it is:
http://forums.techcrunch.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=87