Tweet tweeter twitter. What does Twitter mean to you?
by Eli Altman
I’m not going to talk about how popular Twitter is. I’m not going to debate its merits or talk about how it’s ruining America’s youth. There are tons of places to talk about that (including on Twitter) and I think it has been discussed ad nauseam. Instead I want to talk about the name—the word Twitter itself.
Where does the name come from? If you break it down, the core of the word Twitter is twit. A twitter would be one who twits. (This is turning into a tongue twister faster than I had anticipated.) A twit is basically someone who is persistently mocking. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a twit as, “a silly annoying person: fool.”
Now, let’s think about this for a bit… You normally wouldn’t want to name your company after something like a twit. People tend to avoid negative connotations when they can. Twitter, on the other hand, embraced it–with little blue birds and bubbly type. What makes it so amazing is that the word works whether you love Twitter or hate it. If you love it, you can buy into a playful definition of what Twitter means—staying in constant contact with your friends, being persistent, being silly, spontaneous. If you hate Twitter, you can use the dictionary definition—annoying everyone around you, harassing people with persistent carping and useless information that no one gives a shit about. It works both ways, which means it facilitates love and hatred towards their brand at the same time. Basically, their name helped them become a lightening rod.
Another interesting thing about Twitter is that they call messages ‘Tweets.’ Maybe they wanted to name the company Tweeter originally but the URL was taken—who knows. Anyway, the verb would be twit, but the fine people at Twitter decided to bend the rules a bit and I can’t blame them. Twit is a pretty ugly word that has some negative connotations built in. Tweet is cheery and makes you think of meadows, rainbows and doves. It makes insolent online banter seem like happy birds chatting in a tree. I know some people who refuse to say ‘tweet’ and say ‘twit’ instead, but this inevitably ends up in some argument about which is more correct—an argument that Twitter wins either way.
While I’m not a huge fan of the word itself, Twitter has definitely made the name work. People are talking about it, often passionately, and that’s what counts. Love it or hate it, Twitter became a household name so fast that they have to be applauded.
