| Buzzword or Phrase | As In | What They're Trying to Say | What They're Really Saying |
| ping | "I'll ping you on Thursday about the ASP contract." | "I will e-mail you or leave a voicemail for you on Thursday." | "I'd like to avoid real human contact with you if at all possible." |
| leading | "We're the leading supplier of video and 2-D/3-D graphics accelerators." | "We're #1 in revenue, customers, profits, and respect." | "No one has ever heard of us. but if you look at this tiny, narrow niche in which we've positioned ourselves, we're practically Microsoft." |
| impactful | "We've come up with an impactful new marketing campaign." | "This is profound stuff." | "To get your attention, I'm going to make you think of having a wisdom tooth pulled." |
| path to profitability | "By increasing operational efficiencies, we're embarking on a more aggressive path to profitability." | "Forget that New Economy nonsense. We're a tightly-run operation on its way to making boatloads of money. Maturely." | "We're hanging on until this recession thing ends and VCs start throwing money around again." |
| metrics | "Our strength in several metrics supports a higher valuation." | "We've come up with a few ways of looking at our performance that make us look good." | "No normal financial ratio could make our business seem viable, so we're going to use some ratios we cooked up ourselves." |
| Buzzword or Phrase | As In | What They're Trying to Say | What They're Really Saying |
| CrackBerry | "I'm addicted to the CrackBerry I can't put it away." | "This BlackBerry keeps me in constant touch with the office and lets me take care of important stuff when I'm somewhere else." | "I'm sure you won't mind me ignoring you while we're supposed to be on a date so I can type a response to some nasty office gossip." |
| M-commerce | "We're changing to XML-based architecture to leverage m-commerce opportunities." | "We're going to start conducting our electronic commerce via wireless devices." | "We believe the e-commerce industry's problems could be solved if all computer screens were two inches wide and one inch high and the graphics were black-and-white." |
| slowdown in spending | "The recent slowdown in spending has led our customers to postpone some purchases." | "Our customers are just taking a little breather. They'll be back soon enough." | "We are the only ones spending any money these days mostly on mothballs and warehouse space." |
| MSP (managed service provider) | "We're a pure-play MSP." | "We help our e-commerce clients manage their Web infrastructure." | New pointless acronym = $$$ |
| extracting value | "We're eager to extract value from our user community." | "We have all these people coming to our Web site, and we're sure this must be worth money to somebody." | "Our previous strategy of 'monetizing eyeballs' failed utterly, and now we're trying to eke out every penny we can get." |
| Buzzword or Phrase | As In | What They're Trying to Say | What They're Really Saying |
| uniques (plural noun) | "Our site had 50,000 uniques last month." | "Fifty thousand individuals clicked onto our Web site last month." | "Since there's no consensus on how to measure audiences, we'll publicize the measurements that make us look best." |
| merchantainment | "We're planning to turn this merchantainment concept into future things." --Polo.com's David Lauren, to Bill Gates, at Comdex Las Vegas, 2000 | "Our Web site is going to be interesting to look at while we try to get you to buy something on it." | "'Infomercial' has such a cheesy ring to it." |
| have-to-have | "We deliver comprehensive, have-to-have resources for professionals in accounting, finanace and law." | "We make stuff people really need." | "You folks fell for peer-to-peer and business-to-business, so surely you'll fall for this mumbo-jumbo too." |
| ramping | "We are ramping for a product launch in Q3." | "We are getting ready for a product launch in six months." | "Hey Evel Knievel made it across the Snake River Canyon, right?" |
| provisioning | "We specialize in Internet infrastructure provisioning." | "We help make sure traffic to your Web site doesn't jam up." | "If engineers are the only ones who can understand what we do, then we must be a better investment than e-tailing." |
| Buzzword or Phrase | As In | What They're Trying to Say | What They're Really Saying |
| zero-footprint | "We're a zero-footprint company." | "Our company rents space from a data center." | "We've just discovered a cool new term to use when we admit that we can't really afford to rent our own office." |
| contextualize | "Fast Yack will now be fully integrated into various contextualized areas of Road Runner." | "We will be featured in areas where we're the strongest." | "Good luck trying to find us." |
| sorry | "I'm sorry I can't be more encouraging, but this is how it's gone for everyone else in your position." | "It's really tragic that you aren't getting paid that $3,000 we owe you for the story you wrote (and rewrote) for [Inside] Magazine, but we poor scribes are getting screwed by The Man once again. Hang in there, ink-stained comrade." | "We conned you into doing this story and neglected to send you a contract. Oops. Tough luck. Have fun trying to sue Brill for 3 grand, sucka. The bright side: at least you're not the only one we're reaming." |