Joshua David Stein chronicles how the letter is used less and less on the Internet:
[I]n 2004, Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake founded Flickr, a photograph-sharing
application, without the standard penultimate E. “The most compelling reason to remove the E,” explained Ms. Fake, “was that we were unable to acquire the domain Flicker.com … The rest of the team were more in favor of other options, such as ‘FlickerIt’ or ‘FlickerUp’ but somehow, through persuasion or arm-twisting, I prevailed.” It was good news for the company but bad news for the letter. A year later, the company was acquired by Yahoo for $35 million.
Soon many startups began jettisoning their Es like toxic assets. In 2009, Grindr, a geosocial network application for gay men, chose to make do without the letter E. Membership quickly swelled. Myriad other brands followed suit, including Blendr, Gathr, Pixlr, Readr, Timr, Viewr, Pushr.
And of course, there is the blogging platform Tumblr, whose launch in 2007 may have marked the true end of E. “There are a variety of reasons why Tumblr contains no E, from branding considerations to environmental factors (fewer letters mean lower power consumption by our servers),” said the company’s editorial director, Christopher Price. “At the end of the day, however, it all comes down to one simple, absolute truth: Tumbler.com looks fucking stupid.”
(Image via Flickr user Double–M)
The Dish 