From “Friendstalker” to “Twitter”
It was a very close call and if not a very swift turn in history we would be all “Friendstalker”-ing instead of tweeting. Thankfully the Twitter co-founder’s name suggestion was discarded as too creepy. The platform could have also been called “Twitch,” “Twitcher” and “Jitter.” Platform launched as “Twttr”, later changed to Twitter. After one of the co-founders read the word’s definition aloud from a dictionary: “The light chirping sound made by certain birds; agitation or excitement; flutter.” How highly appropriate? It is also questionable if the success of the platform would be there with another name? We will never know.
World is tweeting away
350,000 tweets are sent every single minute of the hour the days give us.
Hashtag does not belong to Twitter
First hashtags date back to 1988, when people communicated via chat rooms called Internet Relay Chats (IRCs). In 2007 Chris Messina (formerly of Google and now a lead developer at Uber) suggested using hashtags to bundle together tweets that were talking about the same topics. This simple and searchable idea was an instant success.
The real reason for 140 characters
The founders were mobile conscious from the very start. The 140-character limit is because of our mobile phones. The very first tweets were limited to 160 characters – as that was the maximum length of a text you could send or receive. This was later changed to 140 characters – as apparently it is a “beautiful constraint”.
Twitter has lost more than $2 billion in 10 years
This is what the real persistence means! The company has had a lion share of financial problems and continues to battle on. It shows you just how hard it is to turn profits with even the most amazing business idea.
