Sure you may jump when you get an unexpected Twitter notification on your phone, but did you know that reaction almost inspired the social media site’s name?
"We wanted a name that evoked what we did," Twitter founder Jack Dorsey told WNYC in 2011. When you received a tweet, he said, "your phone would buzz. It would jitter. It would twitch."
But jitter and twitch have negative connotations, so Mr. Dorsey and another member of the early Twitter team, Noah Glass, did what many tech companies do when stumped: they headed to the dictionary. They started at the word twitch, and only got through a few definitions before coming upon “twitter,” which means a short, inconsequential burst of information (also: chirps from birds).
“We were like, that describes exactly what we're doing here,” he adds. “So it was an easy choice, and we got twitter.com for some very low price, and we named the company Twitter."
Well, the company actually first called the service “Twttr.” In the end, even short bursts of information are better served with vowels.
