Twitter

Twitter is an online application that is part blog, part social networking site, part cell phone/ IM tool, designated to let users answer the question “What are you doing?” Twitter began in a meeting that was held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo in an attempt to break a creative slump. During that meeting, Jack Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group, a concept partially inspired by the SMS group messaging service "TXTMob".


Twitters original name was "Status" for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. They were trying to name it. Moble companies liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere.

In the name they 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 they did a bunch of name-storming, and 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 they came up with "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.

The 140-character limit on message length was initially set for compatibility with SMS messaging. This has increased the amount of shorthand words and notations like "lol".






http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

http://www.educause.edu/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutTwitt/161801

http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html