You see, when the world wide web picked up in traction around the early 90s, less than 12% of the US had access to the web with that a small fraction of today’s websites were in existence. A few people saw the growth potential in the web and started buying domains left and right by picking: words out of the dictionary, prominent company names, famous names, etc. Since relatively no one was paying attention it was easy to claim them.

Fast forward several years and now there are over a billion people on the net. Domain names are at a premium, and now those cheap purchases in the 90s have turned into a million dollar industry. For example, business.com sold for some 7.5 million USD.

Somewhere around the beginning of the so-called “web2.0″ revolution, instead of capitulating to domain squatters, most web properties went with a more creative approach: create words (or alter them) to a point that no one has heard of it before. Hence, we now have Flickr, digg, and Twitter.

Necessity, is indeed, the mother of invention.