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Twitter Was Nearly Called… Jitter?

WNYC’s Lisa Chow and Jim Colgan spoke with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, who told them that along with “Twitch,” “Jitter” was in serious contention for becoming the name of their new social media creation.

We wanted a name that evoked what we did. We wanted something that was tangible. And we looked at what we were doing and when you received a tweet over SMS, your phone would buzz. It would jitter. It would twitch. And those were the early names, Jitter and Twitch. And neither one of them really inspired the best sort of imagery.

No kidding. One sounds like a venereal disease and the other sounds like the perfect word to describe Ray Charles‘ heroin shakes. Not that Twitter is all that much better. The only reason it works is that the cutesy verb to describe the act of using the product caught on. “To tweet” undoubtedly saved that company’s hide.

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