Bought workpost.com in 2003, intending to turn it into some kind of work / labor-related site (a place to find and post work etc.). Years later, we're finally doing something with it.
Even back then, it was not particularly easy to find a good domain name..
Not bad actually, if you're not just scraping results from other engines (or even if you are), you should keep working on this. When I did searches, I actually found links I was looking for in the first few results. Name is strange but it could grow on me.
Start on basic hosting and upgrade as needed.
Ultimahosts.net, ASmallorange.com, Webfaction.com are good.
Move up to Slicehost.. Rackspace... and if you're too big for Rackspace... you might already have the resources to start your own hosting company.
At my college we had "Faces and Places" a.k.a the "Meet Book" otherwise known as the "Meat Book." I don't remember it specifically called the "Face Book" but I don't think it's a stretch to think that kids at many other schools would have called it that.
Talk to a few good plumbers and you'll realize that they are all set. Kids these days want to go to college and get "white collar" jobs and this has created a huge opportunity for smart people who work in the trades.
Great points, actually. I was running it in Virtual PC recently and marveled at how incredibly few resources it used. I was surprised by how much software I could get to run on it as well.
Try Ultimahosts.net. It's true, there are less choices available for cheap ASP.NET hosting but Ultimahosts have got to be among the best.
You might have to ask to get it but they have shared plans that offer 400 MB storage, unlimited SQL databases, Dotnetpanel controls, unlimited domains + subdomains etc. and plenty of bandwidth to mess around for $15/month.
In fact, they don't seem to even track bandwidth.
My most memory-intensive sites are not on shared hosting but I have many smaller sites hosted on a single shared account. Good luck.
Think about what you want the application to do, brainstorm, free associate and go from there. You've got a mobile application + social networking twist.. off the top of my head I think... sociable.. socimobile, mob social, text social, social text.. socialcom.. socialmeet.. meetsocial.. but I think some of those are taken..
There's also a tradition of adding.. ista.. and ist on to words.. mobista.. mobilist.. mobilista.. (just looked online, I see squatters have already got two of those). Also.. mobilizer.. socializer.. but don't do the flickr thing if you don't have to..
Making plays on words other people have suggested.. I'd look at shoutspace, textspace.. shouttext.. textyell.. hollaspace.. mobiile.. txtmobl..textpush.. socialpush.. sociplace.. freesocial.. soctxt.. txtpush.. textero.. socialpath (play on sociopath?) no idea if any of those are taken or used yet.
Do NOT name it anything having to do with Twitter.. or put an i in front of it.. that is totally done already.
One of my ongoing projects is called Workpost. It's a place to post and find work and, soon, will be a place to list and review workers. We have other stuff planned for future versions of the site + application but it all originates from the name and the brand.
It's cool if you can think of a nonsense word and then turn that into a brand but with all the web 2.0 names out there, I think it's more useful now if you can start with a name that already means something.
Wouldn't a statement like this make more sense after the entrepreneur has sold his / her first company? Once you've obtained a certain amount of money and success, ideas become a lot more important because you've got the freedom to choose which ideas you want to develop?
ASP.NET and C# has worked well for Workpost so far. We were able to get version 1.0 online quickly and any issues we've had lately are not related to the platform.
Scaling will be a difficult (but welcome) problem though SQL Server does not have to cost quite as much as most people think it does.
Microsoft could, however, offer more incentives and assistance to startups who choose to use their platform. They've made a lot of progress in the last few years toward being more developer-friendly but they need to go even further.
Finding talented ASP.NET / C# developers willing to work on startups can also also a challenge.
Bought workpost.com in 2003, intending to turn it into some kind of work / labor-related site (a place to find and post work etc.). Years later, we're finally doing something with it.
Even back then, it was not particularly easy to find a good domain name..