Twitter: Some lesser-known facts about the blue bird
Twitter, which was created back in 2006, over the span of 11 years, has ballooned into one of the biggest social media platforms out there. Politicians, celebrities, CEOs, you name it and they are on the platform expressing themselves with "tweets." There is a lot more to this platform other than being Donald Trump's medium to make a fool out of himself. Here's more!
The first tweet
Initially, the first message posted on Twitter was automated. The default tweet was "Just setting up my twttr". Co-founder Jack Dorsey posted the first ever tweet, beating the other co-founder Christopher Isaac "Biz" Stone by a minute on March 21, 2006, at 4:50 pm PT. The social media platform was open for public after four months, on July 15, 2006.
His name is Larry
Twitter's affable little bird or logo has a name. He is called Larry and was named after the basketball team, Boston Celtics' legend Larry Bird. Interestingly, Twitter wasn't behind creating most of the things that are associated with the platform. Features like Retweets, replies, hashtags, mobile app and social ads were created by users and developers in its ecosystem. Twitter just supported them later.
Jitters, we agree was a bad name
When they were building the product, the founders mulled on the name "Jitter" for a while. They were skeptical about using "Twitter," as it's perceived to be demeaning in certain cultures. However, they went ahead with it and managed to acquire the domain Twitter.com for a paltry sum in 2006. Before it was purchased, there were no activities going on, on that page.
Tweet, tweet
Twitter was the result of a hackathon. The team was sitting on the top of a slide at a South Park playground, where Jack Dorsey shared an "idea so simple that you don't even think about it—you just write." Twitter was going to be called Twitch. However, later the team felt that the word Twitter described their platform perfectly. So, they settled for it.
