The First Tweet

On the fifth anniversary of the social networking site, its co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey started tweeting the story of how it all began

On 14 March, the fifth anniversary of the social networking site, its co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey (@jack) started tweeting the story of how it all began

» 5 years ago today we started programming Twitter (“twttr” for short). 8 days later the first tweet was sent: j.mp/19bhrr #twttr

» The team was small: @Noah came up with the name & managed, @florian & I programmed, @Biz designed, all under the roof of Odeo & @Ev. #twttr

» The name Twitter came from @Noah Glass & the Oxford English: “a short inconsequential burst of information, chirps from birds.” #twttr

» However, we wanted to focus on mobile, so we dropped the vowels to get the SMS shortcode 89887 (TWTTR). Too bad Teen People owned it. #twttr

» I drew out the original idea on this notepad around 2001, named stat.us. Just needed the right time & team. https://t.co/aMft0SM #twttr

» A week earlier, @Biz & I worked on the design to show Odeo before programming. Here’s the first twttr.com. https://t.co/s1gPjKv #twttr

» An IM with @Biz suggesting “twttr.” I wasn’t happy with the no vowels, but the domain was available... https://t.co/5HXm5zt #twttr

» Originally I was going to program twttr in Python, C, & Ocaml. But, I got @florian who was a core contributor to Ruby on Rails. #twttr

» I’m not sure if one counts the day of original programming or the first tweet (the 21st) as Twitter’s birthday. Probably the latter. #twttr

» We had 14 days to finish. But our excitement drove us to work non-stop. And we moved fast. More on Twitter’s history tomorrow. #5 #twttr 

» At 5:33PM 5 years ago today, we had design, login, & update. There were only 2 people on twttr, me & @florian. https://t.co/Slqj6Kx #twttr

» Twitter has had a number of logos, but this was the first. Created by @Biz on March 2nd at 2:20PM. https://t.co/X7CUk9b #twttr