Former Feedster CTO Scott Johnson has a new mistress. Her name is Ookle. Less than a week after his sudden exodus from Feedster, Johnson and Australian IM buddy Michael Air (yes, he’s never met him in person) have set up Ookles.com, a stealth mode webpage with an information sign-up screen. And that’s it. Mum’s the word until at least January 31st.
What’s An Ookle?
The first rule of Ookles is you don’t talk about Ookles. And even in an interview with himself, Johnson speaks in riddles.
In that interview with himself on his blog, Johnson asks Johnson, “doesn’t the name Ookles.com, well, suck?”
Johnson answers, “Certainly. The name bites ass actually.”
So what is an Ookle, anyway?
Johnson, in a 20-questions interview with murdok this time, said, “It won’t be what you think it is. You’re mom will likely care. There is a theme.”
Ookle must be Australian for something. It was Johnson’s Aussie buddy that came up with it. But the name could change once they figure out what they’re doing with this thing.
“Ookles.com won’t be the final name but you need something to start and we wanted something that was pronounce-able and felt like a word. Mike came up with Ookles.com and it’s more than good enough for now,” writes Johnson.
Johnson claims he’s never seen anyone do a web startup of this nature and the marketing strategy is unique as well. That’s a lot of buzz words-is it something Web 2.0?
“I’d actually describe this one as Web 1.0 but done right.’ We’ll certainly market to bloggers initially since they are today’s alpha geek and the test bed but we’ll make our money with Ma and Pa Kettle’. This one is something that I hope even my Mom will use.”
Johnson says since the startup is still a newborn (still a gleam in his eye actually), he’s hasn’t raised a cent to fund it yet, nor has he written one line of code.
“It’s not going to take a lot of money. We can build this soup to nuts quickly and then scale it either from our pockets or from like $100K in hardware,” he said.
“I will say that this one hinges on trust. It absolutely bloody hinges on it. And consequently I will be more open than I’ve ever been, because in transparency there is trust. And I will likely spill the whole marketing strategy at the launch because it’s so damn hard to emulate this marketing strategy.”
Whatever Ookles.com is, Johnson says it includes tags and search but isn’t about either; it taps into memes and core shifts of the Internet industry; it’s heavily viral.
But until the scheduled 0.1 version launch on January 31st (if it’s done by then), Johnson will continue to speak in riddles.
