Okay, I’m going to get a little bit snobby here. Unheard of, I know, but needs must.

YouGov the British online polling outfit has come up with a list of internet names which drive people up the wall. I’m climbing the wall just looking at them, especially as the list contains some of my very unfavourite terms, incuding “blog” and “wiki”. How can any serious person ever use the word, wiki? It sounds like a Tibetan yak.

Here’s the list in descending order of gruesomeness :

1. Folksonomy (groan, but it shouldn’t be top)
2. Blogosphere (okay, number 2 is about right)
3. Blog (now that should be #1 on anyone’s list)
4. Netiquette (pretty harmless, but what the hell)
5. Blook (now that is a bloody disgrace)
6. Webinar (hmm, doesn’t hit me viscerally)
7. Vlog (talk about mangling the English language)
8. Social networking (I’ve already run a mile just typing it)
9. Cookie (some things are just born to crumble)
10 = Wiki (should have been strangled at birth and higher in the list)
= Podcast (it sounds so insignificant, who let it live?)
= Avatar (Hindu holymen have got a long-standing option on this one)
= User-Generated Content (a mashup with almost no meaning).

The poll of 2000 internet users was done to mark the 10th anniversary of the word “weblog”. I wonder if any of them will last another 10 years?