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The Atlantic Names Its New Business News Site: 'Quartz.' Quartz? Yep. Quartz.

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Quartz (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Naming a new website in the year 2012 requires a fair amount of creativity and compromise. All the obvious good domains have been taken, and plenty of the bad ones, too.

Atlantic Media went heavy on the creativity in naming the business news site it plans to launch later this year. It will be called Quartz, a name whose connections to the world of global business and finance aren't immediately obvious.

They do exist, however, says Kevin Delaney, the new site's editor in chief. "The choice ultimately came down between a more classic, traditional name and something we felt was less conventional and possibly a little more surprising to people," says Delaney, who joined Atlantic Media in January from The Wall Street Journal.

"We like Quartz. It's a really interesting word on a number of levels."

One is symbolic: The mineral quartz is associated with intense geological activity. "It's a bit of a metaphor for our intent to cover obsessively the tectonic shifts in the global economy," Delaney says.

Another is aesthetic: With both a 'q' and a 'z,' two of the least frequently used letters, it's just an unusual and distinctive-looking word.

Then there are the utilitarian considerations. For its domain, Quartz will drop all the more common characters in favor of the ultra-pithy qz.com. In an environment where the importance of Twitter as a distribution channel puts characters at a premium, a two-letter domain "practically eliminates the needs for a URL shortener," says Delaney. "From a practical standpoint, it's user-friendly."

It's also easier for mobile users to type in on their smallish keyboards. Plus there's the fact that the company that owns Quartz.com, a manufacturer of scientific equipment, didn't want to give it up.

Ultimately, it may not matter all that much what the domain name is. Among other things, Quartz aims to be the first business-news site designed primarily for consumption via tablets and other mobile devices.

"We'll have a desktop site as well," says Delaney, "but it's pretty clear that's where our readers are headed."