What is Twitter?
June 29, 2009 - 3 comments
What is Twitter? That’s the question a lot of people ask. Those who are familiar with the service and use it on a daily basis will tell you what it is, but are they right? Twitter started out as a project by company board members of Odeo. Not realizing just how popular the service would be, the board members including Jack Dorsey, branded the service Twttr. Inspired by services like Flickr, the service adopted American mobile short code 40404 due to the fact that it is easily remembered and can be used by SMS from most American mobile phone carriers.
The working name was just “Status” for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on … We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere.
We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word “twitch,” because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But “twitch” is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word “twitter,” and it was just perfect. The definition was “a short burst of inconsequential information,” and “chirps from birds.” And that’s exactly what the product was.
—Jack Dorsey
Twitter is not the new kid on the block anymore. The service has become mainstream in the fact that the name alone is being used in everything from commercials and news casts to viral advertising by companies like Pepsi. Twitter is used by individuals, companies as a form of marketing and even celebrities. So, what do you think Twitter is? Is it a messaging service, a status tracker, an instant messaging service or all of the above? Do you think people are using the service as it was intended?
Personally I think Twitter has spun out into a life of its own. I believe it became bigger than anyone had anticipated and will have dire effects if it ever shuts down for good. I don’t anticipate that happening in the foreseeable future. Is it a fad or faze that we are going through or will Twitter stand the test of time? I guess we’ll have to wait and see but they will have to come up with a plan to monetize the service before they run out of funding, otherwise the service will be lost and that would be a sad day for those of us who are social media geeks.
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