How Thoof.com got its unique name!
In our previous coverage of Thoof, we talked about how social sites with user contribution is the current trend on the internet. Thoof promises to be something new and different where the focus is on personalized news.
Instead of showing stuff which the editors like, like TechCrunch or AskStudent or fully community based sites such as Digg or Reddit, Thoof readers will see something which the algorithm thinks you will like and these stories will show up in your own personalized unique Thoof homepage. Thoof also has a rating system which is called “ThoofRank”. What ThoofRank does is it measures how interesting and important a story is to other thoof readers who are interested in stories or news items with similar topics. An article or story ranked 50% by ThoofRank means that the article is recognized by other readers as above average. In order for members to get their posts rated, a ThoofRank badge code is attached on their post on their blog or website. According to its CEO,
“Thoof is designed to solve two key problems with today’s user generated news websites. The first is quality and accuracy of news stories, to address this we took a page out of Wikipedia’s book, if you see something wrong, you can fix it yourself by editing a story directly. The second is that everyone sees the same stuff, even though everyone obviously doesn’t have the same interests. To address this we developed a novel algorithm which learns what your interests are, and tailors stories to you tastes, right from the first moment you visit the website”.
Check out Thoof’s demo page to answer your questions
All very interesting and unique just like the name of the site … Thoof. If you go in the about us section at Thoof, you see that the CEO of Thoof is a … remember Ian Clarke who gave us The Freenet Project and Revver, ya him , but nothing about the story behind the unique name Thoof.
It’s, “really just a name, intended to be short and memorable,” Clarke once told. “It sounds a bit like ‘truth’, which is what we hope people will find on Thoof.”
I am still not convinced. Since when does Thoof rhyme with Truth. When Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reviewed Thoof, he provided us with a very good insight but his readers started talking about the name instead — Thoof.
“With a name like Thoof, how can it fail?” says one. However, if I ever have to scratch my brains and come up with one reason behind the unique name Thoof, it has to be this
Thoof is a neat example of onomatopoeia.
Ever hear the sound a potato canon makes when it launches its projectile? You bet you have, and you loved it. Because it’s a bassy, satisfying
.
.
.*THOOF!*
Connotes speed and impulse. I like that in my news.
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