When it comes to the magical "oo" factor in Silicon Valley, Yahoo qualifies as the first mover, followed by Google and YouTube.

Make that first moover, heh heh.

The ''oo'' here is not to be confused with the visceral, ain't-it-cool ''ooh'' inspired by, say, a video chat on Skype or an iPhone. Rather, it's the indisputable fact that so many venture-backed Web startups happen to have the "oo" in their names, either the letters or sound.

Is it simply clever marketing to embed an ''oo'' in your brand, or collective nostalgia for Dr. Seuss? In the last few weeks, I've written about companies named Oodle, Ooyala and Zoosk. I've been meaning to catch up with Joost and Hulu. And maybe Kaboodle.

Then there's Facebook, which has the letters but really not the sound.

"Except in Canada," pointed out Bob Goodson, co-founder and chief executive of YouNoodle. His startup is known for collecting and crunching data about other startups as a means of forecasting their prospects of success.

For the record, Goodson insists that YouNoodle's research has not determined that the "oo'' sound or the letters actually deliver a measurable boost to a business. But YouNoodle doubled down on the ''oo'', didn't it?

The trend has not gone unnoticed.

"Let's do a little history of the search engine space," wrote an analyst who uses the nom de blog Johnny Debacle at the site Long or Short Capital. "Coming out of the primordial ooze of


the 80's and 90's there were many, mostly those who could barely walk (Altavista, AskJeeves) and amongst them, Yahoo rose. And who could defeat the incumbent and its OO? Google, a company who knew that they couldn't put the OO in the caboose. If they wanted to take down the champ, they had to knock him out. So they put the OO right in the middle and the rest is history."

Debacle also salutes the oomph of Bluetooth. ''And HD-DVD? Didn't have a chance against Blu-Ray." And why did Microsoft offer so much for Yahoo in the aborted acquisition? "Clearly, the OO premium. There isn't much of it out there, so when OO assets are available, they get bid up."

Yahoo and Google perhaps cast the "oo" as a lucky charm. Come to think of it, it reads a little like a 8 turned on its side — and the Chinese associate 8 with good fortune.

Serial entrepreneur and angel investor Kevin Hartz, whose portfolio includes Xoom and Youniversity Ventures, points out that Sequoia Capital helped finance the ''oo,'' as an early investor in Yahoo, Google and YouTube. It also backed Hartz's first startup, Xoom, a global money transfer service that is pronounce zoom.

Founders have their own explanations for the monickers. The name Xoom was plucked from dotcom wreckage of another company. Oodle's founders, working to bring "social classifieds" to Facebook, MySpace and other sites, said the company's name came during dinner at an Italian restaurant. One person suggested Ravioli "simply because everyone loves ravioli." Somebody else suggested Noodle, which led to Oodle — ''the place you go for oodles of classifieds listings. And with that, Oodle was born."

YouNoodle's Goodson, who studied English literature at Oxford University, said he and his partners were conscious that "noodle" already was in use as a verb, a synonym for thinking.

Meanwhile, in other "oo" news, TechCrunch reported that Paris-based Jooce really didn't shut down after all.

Zenprise, a Fremont-based maker of management and troubleshooting software for the BlackBerry, iPhone and Windows Mobile systems, announced it has completed a $10 million funding round led by Ignition Partners. Previous investors Bay Partners, Mayfield, and Shasta Ventures all participated in the round.

Zenprise hopes to dominate its corner of an exploding market for smartphones used for business purposes. In a press release, the company cited a Radicati Group study that projects 600 million smartphones will be used for business by 2011, more than twelve times the 49 million in use now. "Smartphone growth may be increasing, but IT budgets are flat or shrinking," Zenprise said. "As a result, IT departments need mobile management products that help improve operational efficiencies and reduce labor costs."