What’s in a name? For a new generation of dot-com start-ups, not a whole lot of sense.

Ever heard of Qumana the blog editing site? What about Tagtooga or Tendango, two sites for social networking? Ok, let’s try BooRah, a site dedicated to restaurant reviews?

What do these names have to do with the services they offer? Not a thing. But in the midst of corporate baby boom where Internet start-ups are born daily, these young companies are desperate to differentiate themselves from the rest of the pack.

Their method of differentiation? Choosing the wackiest, most nonsensical names you’ve ever heard, all which seem to resemble some form of gibberish rather than the English language.

Take Silicon Valley as a prime example. According to research firm Dow Jones VentureOne, since the beginning of 2006 venture capitalists have invested $2.5 billion into 400 young Internet companies. That’s remarkable considering the fact that venture capitalists only poured $1.3 billion into 236 companies during the previous two years.

Now with competitors like Google, Yahoo and ebay, no one expects that these babies will last for long. But nevertheless, they are popping up everywhere you look – and they all need names. And in their great struggle to be unique, these companies focus on names more outlandish than rational.

“Naming a company is like naming a celebrity,” said serial entrepreneur Jared Kopf, who has helped christen companies including Adroll.com, his online advertising firm, and Slide, a Web photo service. “Made-up words don’t come with psychological baggage.”

Now I am the first to admit that picking a catchy, unique name is no easy task – and I also realize that these companies have to deal with the reality that almost every recognizable domain name has been scooped up with the intent to be resold for a big profit.

But picking a name should be thought of as defining a brand, not unraveling the English language. Like a brand, the name should evoke an emotional feeling when the customer hears or sees it. A great brand doesn’t just say they are like no one else. It makes you feel that they are like no one else. And a made up, crazily concocted word just doesn’t cut it.

So young dot-com’s, here’s a little tip: rather than putting all your energy into creating a name that is beyond recognition, try instead to come up with a name that evokes the exact feeling your product elicits. Develop a name that strikes a note of understanding with your customers – a note they can commit to memory. It may be the difference between a company that lives on and one that becomes nameless.

Networking is a great tool for making new contacts and spreading the word about yourself or your company. Once reserved for trade shows or meet-and-great cocktail parties, networking is taking on a new face: the Power Lunch. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the idea is spreading in Silicon Valley. Around two years ago a small group of Google employees began meeting at corporate cafeterias around the San Francisco Bay area in an effort to rub elbows with employees at other technology companies. According to the article, they posted their lunch schedule on a blog and opened the meetings to anyone interested. Now called Lunch 2.0, the power lunches have become a social-networking phenomenon, drawing hundreds of engineers, venture capitalists to various companies for free lunches and meet-and-greets.

The main purpose of the events is to meet other people in the business and push products to the influential blog community. And employees aren’t the only ones jumping on the bandwagon – big companies like Microsoft and Facebook have hosted Lunch 2.0 events as an innovative way of recruiting new employees under the guise of a networking event. In fact, a recent lunch at AOL drew a crowd of 200.

That’s it folks, it’s time to start power lunching because it appears to be the next big trend. Originally located exclusively in San Francisco, Lunch 2.0 has quickly spread to Seattle, New York and Atlanta, and that’s not all. The concept is even spreading abroad – groups similar to Lunch 2.0 have started events in Singapore and Bangalore!  How’s that for viral marketing?

I know, I know. The cancellation of Michael Vick’s interview with a local radio station this morning due to a “scheduling conflict” has friends and foes alike in an uproar. From a crisis communications standpoint, however, this was a great decision made on Vick’s behalf by his advisors.

In any crisis situation, the first step is to validate concerns and the second is to show action. While we certainly do not condone Vick’s behavior, his apology was top-notch and more than validated concerns. In his apology, Vick took full responsibility for his actions, calling his behavior immature and stating that he was disappointed in himself. Nowhere in his apology did he point the finger at others or deny the extent to which he was involved. His next step now is to show action and conducting media interviews should not come as a top priority. Vick needs to prove that he is sorry with action – as a great prophet (or someone smart) said: actions speak louder than words. Instead of rehashing his wrongs, he needs to focus on making it right, whether it’s through volunteer work for PETA or working with the children he referenced in his apology. His actions need to show he’s concerned that his child fans and admirers don’t grow up to make the same bad decisions he did.

So to supporters, friends, enemies and the like, let’s let Vick show us what he’s made of. From the looks of it, he’s at least on the right track to surviving Crisis Communications 101.

Unusual news has a knack for spreading across the country like wildfire.

Take a story from earlier this month, for example, when a man walked into an Indiana bank lugging bags of change and $1 bills ($12,656.07 to be precise) to pay his property tax bill. (Apparently real life’s not exactly like in the movies where half a million fits snugly into a metallic briefcase).

Granted, the stunt was not a chance event. It was staged to protest Indiana’s property tax increases, but that doesn’t take away from its viral, sticky appeal that vaulted it to national attention. Our internal schema actually enables us to visualize the size of the bags of money, the effort to hoist them to the bank, and the consuming effort it takes to count all the money by hand. And, it evokes an uncomfortable awareness that this is a lot of money to be paying for property taxes.

And now I have to share a similarly “sticky” story from Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick. In the early ‘90s, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) made a shocking discovery: a medium size bag of movie popcorn had 37 grams of saturated fat, nearly double the USDA daily recommended intake. Shocking, indeed, but a difficult numbers-ridden message is tough to convey to the movie-going, popcorn-loving public. The solution: rather than focus the message on scientific analysis and numerical values, CSPI held a landmark press conference. Their announcement: “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings – combined!” To illustrate this they laid out two tables, one with a day’s worth of unhealthy food and the other bare save for a medium-sized bag of popcorn. Unsurprisingly, the story was an immediate hit that “saturated” national television, radio, and print coverage.

So what’s the message here? The stories behind greasy popcorn and sky-high property taxes are similar – the involved parties were able to transform an intangible, numerical value (37 grams of fat and $12,656.07) into a simple, concrete and unexpected story. These qualities are the mark of a great news hook – ones that we PR professionals strive to create daily.

We have to give a huge shout-out to W.T. McKibben of The Great Lakes Group and Joel Postman of Eastwick Communications for their recent articles answering the question, “What is a PR person?” They were articulate and straightforward in their rejection of “spin doctors” and “press release mills” as definitions. Their honest approach to this topic was refreshing and energizing.

We always tell our clients, “We are not a press release factory. We do not take news that you have and broker it to the media.” We pride ourselves on our ability to help craft and articulate our clients’ messages in a way that is meaningful and helps them achieve their business goals. And it’s nice to know other “PR people” out there feel the same.

This is one of my favorite parts of the McKibben piece:

“In every city there are a few with ‘public relations’ on their shingle proudly calling themselves ’spin doctors.’ While I understand the naiveté of many business people who don’t know any better, I am amazed that these tactics continue to work. We all know that while it may have its initial successes, the media gets really pissed when they discover they have been misled. As one of my clients once put it, “No matter how hard you rub it, you can’t shine shit.”

Postman goes even further in describing what “PR people” are to him:

“For many, the phrase ‘Trusted Communications Advisor’ is a cliché, a throwaway descriptor included in the summary of many communications resumes. But these people do exist, and achieving trusted advisor status is the ultimate achievement for any communications professional.”

The best PR people are advisors. An advisor is someone who has a thoughtful and interesting perspective on an issue at hand. An advisor has inside knowledge or relevant experience. Communications advisors are valuable members of the corporate team.

So I’ll put this to the community, to you – is there an alternative to the term “PR person?” We spend our days coining meaningful ideas and relevant points of view for our clients. We should be able to come up with something better than that to describe the real role we play in business and to distinguish us from the spin doctors, press release mills and publicists that currently label us. Three cheers for whoever has a solution.