In 2004 Tim O'Reilly coined the now-ubiquitous "web 2.0" phrase. This term became the name for the paradigm shift in global online culture that is destroying the top-down, one-to-many communication ethos that has underpinned business and media for centuries. A communication event for the last few hundred years was a single defined thing that was 'broadcast' or 'circulated' to a target group and then consigned to history. The fundamental change that the term web 2.0 inadequately tries to describe is that a communication event is now something that starts and spreads, fed by the input of tens, hundreds and possibly thousands of participants. A communication event now includes the audience and as the audience participates the communication grows and spreads and rages just like a fire.

The name 'firestarter' reflects our vision of this application as an enabling system for a new type of communication and interaction that happens between communicators and the audience. Instead of generating a communication and then simply broadcasting or circulating it to a group, the origination is to be seen as the start of an ongoing event, not the end of it. The more fires you start, the more intelligence, communication, innovation and overall engagement will occur.