Twitter creator Jack Dorsey illuminates the site's founding document. Part I

Twitter's prehistoric document, circa 2000. An early temporary name was "Stat.us."
Credit: Jack Dorsey.

Sitting in the Flickr archives is a nearly 10-year-old document uploaded a couple of years ago by its author, Jack Dorsey (@jack), who started Twitter in 2006 along with co-founders Evan Williams (@ev) and Biz Stone (@biz).

The legal-pad sketch of the idea that would become Twitter has been noticed before, but given all the recent hype, we thought we'd track down Dorsey and ask him about it in a little more detail. In the following interview, Dorsey uses the document to touch on aspects of the micromessaging service's history, including the inspirations and constraints that came to define one of the Web's most rapidly growing information channels.

Twitter didn't just fly out of thin air and land on a branch. As Dorsey explains, it has conceptual roots in the world of vehicle dispatch -- where cars and bikes zooming around town must constantly squawk to each other about where they are and what they're up to.

It was when Dorsey saw these systems through the eyes of the social, mobile Web, where anyone can squawk from anywhere, that Twitter's Big Idea was born. 

Here's the second part of the interview, posted Thursday.

Is this the founding Twitter document?

It has very special significance -- it's hanging in the office somewhere with one other page. Whenever I'm thinking about something, I really like to take out the yellow notepad and get it down.

Twitter has been my life's work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now. That led me to the only thing that was tractable in discovering that, which was bicycle messengers and truck couriers roaming about, delivering packages.

That allowed me to create this visualization -- to create software that allowed me to see how this was all moving in a city. Then we started adding in the next element, which are taxi cabs. Now we have another entity roaming about the metropolis, reporting where it is and what work it has, going over GPS and CB radio or cellphone. And then you get to the emergency services: ambulances, firetrucks and police -- and suddenly you have have this very rich sense of what’s happening right now in the city. 

But it’s missing the public. It's missing normal people. 

And that’s where Twitter came in.  What really brought me to that conclusion ...

... was instant messenger. This aspect where you can just locate your buddy list and at a glance locate what your friends are up to, or what they say they’re up to. I found the same parallels in dispatch -- here’s a bunch of ambulances and couriers reporting where they are, and here’s my friends. Now, the problem with IM is that you’re bound to the computer, so it really limited the interestingness of the messages.

So that document was around 2000-2001 when I really got into IM and a service called LiveJournal. And it was crystallizing the thought: What if you have LiveJournal, but you just make it more live? You have these people watching your journal, but it all happens in real time, and you can update it from anywhere. That document was an exploration of that concept.

When did you first try to build out the idea?

I tried it back in 2000 with the first device that RIM made -- the RIM 850, which was the predecessor to the BlackBerry. A very simple squat little e-mail device. It had four lines of text and a typical BlackBerry keyboard. They were like $400, and it would just do e-mail. I wrote a very simple program to listen to an e-mail address and take any updates from me and send them out to a list of my friends. And my friends could reply to that e-mail and tell me what they’re doing. 

But the problem was that no one else had those devices –- so again, it limited the experience of that.  We were limited until 2005-2006 when SMS took off in this country and I could finally send a message from Cingular to Verizon. And that just crystallized -- well, now’s the time for this idea. And we started working on it. 

It was really SMS that inspired the further direction -- the particular constraint of 140 characters was kind of borrowed. You have a natural constraint with the couriers when you update your location or with IM when you update your status. But SMS allowed this other constraint, where most basic phones are limited to 160 characters before they split the messages. So in order to minimize the hassle and thinking around receiving a message, we wanted to make sure that we were not splitting any messages. So we took 20 characters for the user name, and left 140 for the content. That’s where it all came from.

For any potential Twitter historians out there, can you offer a few more details about the drawing -- the little googly eyes, for example?

The little eyeballs were "watching." The concept was watching before we kind of switched it and developed it into "following." So you could watch or unwatch someone -- but we found a better word -- follow or unfollow. The important consideration there was that on Twitter, you’re not watching the person, you’re watching what they produce. It’s not a social network, so there’s no real social pressure inherent in having to call them a "friend" or having to call them a relative, because you’re not dealing with them personally, you’re dealing with what they’ve put out there.

The document's user interface metaphor is very similar [to how Twitter turned out]. You have a little box to "set" your update, and past updates would go down into the timeline below. 

Immediately the idea was device-agnostic. You could deliver over e-mail or deliver over Jabber, because IM was a real-time mechanism -- and eventually you could deliver over SMS as well. And the only other aspect on that page was how to find other people. If you know someone, you type in their name or e-mail address, and you can immediately start following their updates.

What are the "authentication triples" on the upper left there?

I was trying to be a little bit too smart, and was trying to figure out ways to do everything without a password. But that’s very difficult and requires way too much thought. So we punted on that. But someone will figure it out. [laughs]

Then when did the service's name morph from “Status/Stat.us” to “twittr” to Twitter?

The working name was just "Status" for a while. It actually didn’t have a name. We were trying to name it, and mobile was a big aspect of the product early on ... We liked the SMS aspect, and how you could update from anywhere and receive from anywhere.

We wanted to capture that in the name -- we 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 we did a bunch of name-storming, and we 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 we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word "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 whole bird thing: bird chirps sound meaningless to us, but meaning is applied by other birds. The same is true of Twitter: a lot of messages can be seen as completely useless and meaningless, but it’s entirely dependent on the recipient. So we just fell in love with the word. It was like, "Oh, this is it." We can use it as a verb, as a noun, it fits with so many other words. If you get too many messages you’re "twitterpated" -- the name was just perfect.

But you needed that short code -– in order to operate SMS you need the short code to operate with this cellular administration. So we were trying to get "twttr" -- because we could just take out the vowels and get the 5-digit code. But unfortunately Teen People had that code -– it was ‘txttp’ [Text TP]. So we just decided to get an easy-to-remember short code [40404], and put the vowels back in.

So Twitter was it, and it’s been a big part of our success. Naming something and getting the branding right is really important.

Updated Feb. 19: Here's the second part of the interview, in which Dorsey talks about the growing Twitter ecosystem, the service's effect on news gathering and why he doesn't like to "go back in time."

-- David Sarno [follow on Twitter]

Comments

[@yumba]

Thanks for this post!! Jack, Biz y Ev are a genius!
Saludos!

[Ed]

"Twitter: It's for everybody"

Great homepage, neighborhood and information stream, built and manned by some terrific folks.

[jackman]

friend stalker? damn important precursor to the evolution of twitter that mr dorsey conveniently forgets.

[Curtis]

Lame. Welcome to almost 3 years ago. The picture was uploaded: July 5, 2006

[@davideckoff]

As someone passionate about developing new products - and who’s used Twitter for 2 years - I really enjoyed this view into how Twitter was born.

I love that definition for the word Twitter: "a short burst of inconsequential information."

I have to laugh about when I was at the Charles River Ventures CEO Summit April 2007, and @Ev was sitting nearby and I found myself twittering about the founder of Twitter. Ironic, don’t you think?

And hey, I’d like to follow YOU on Twitter. Let’s connect, I’m @davideckoff.

[Rodney Rumford]

This is a very interesting interview. They have done an excellent job of execvuting on Jacks vision. It is interesting how a problem that addresses a real world issue (vehicle dispatch) got twisted thru a social lens and became twitter.

Twitter is now becoming a business communication channel. I have authored a book on this recently.

The seeds of genius are in simplicity sometimes. Cheers!

[jackman2]

mr dorsey conveniently forgets a lot of things

[@haroldcampbell]

Simple idea. Simple concept. Brilliant application.

This once again shows that we can all have ideas. What makes one app great (Twitter) vs one that fades (Pownce) is the implementation. The passion of the developers (or lack of) will always shine through.

[josh]

what is that software he speaks about that follows wats going on in a city like packages, couriers, emergency vehicles, taxi cabs. Thats seems very cool, is that online somwhere or long gone?

[Bill Crosby]

What makes Twitter so perfect is it's simplicity and the fact the developers have open it for many people to build 3rd party interfaces so easily to it (syndication).

And added bonus, it is a ton of fun communicating with people all over the world!

On that note, come find me @BillCrosby

[Laurel Chase-Dunn]

Hi Jack,
Love the twitter and all it does for the mind. But I have ONE big problem and that is while over 50K follow you and your partners have huge numbers as well, you only follow several hundred.
So my problem with that is "How are YOU" going to know what's going on with others that might be of HUGE significance? I'm not talking about the fact that the neighbors dog just bite me either.
More important stuff, like www.KangenWaterMagic.com this is a HUGE technology of 40 years from Japan, now available in the USA. I want to tell you more, or just visit the site and ask for the free DVD. I'll ship it out to you pronto.
By the way, I'm a native Californian used to live in Los Altos, Palo Alto, Pleasant Hill, Monterey, Carmel and now in Phoenix AZ area.
It would be my honor to send you this DVD, it really does change everything!

Thanks for the read, cause I couldn't have said this in 140 characters! :~)
Have a Waterful Day,
LCD

[Kev Jaques]

Often the most simplest of ideas become a reality, action is key

Now please add in paging buttons to the top of the twitter page for people who read their twitter posts backwards heheh :)

[Daniel Hindin]

Wow, it's really great to see how this phenomenon that has become Twitter was first conceived. Thank you for the opportunity, Jack and David, to understand how such an amazing idea comes about through an organic process. I love the photo of the yellow legal pad drawing. That should go in the Smithsonian or something! Oh, and I think the name worked out just perfectly. Twitter makes perfect sense!

[Aaron]

I looked at the picture of the "founding document" and then looked at the pile of notebooks sitting on my desk, all filled with similar drawings and ideas. I thought, "Why does his piece of paper, his idea actually come to life?" I read the article, then read the comment directly above this one (Kev Jaques) and found my answer:

"Often the most simplest of ideas become a reality, action is key."

Looking forward to part 2.

[CrystalsQuest]

Thx 4 this. Shows how much thought & effort went into creating it, right down to picking the name! Great insight.

Now how about posting how the 140char limit is training us to convey meaning concisely, reviving haiku, and changing communication styles!? For eg. since using twitter my blog headlines have got shorter...

Anyone else changed something because of it?

[thecoder0]

Great Read very informative.Just shows what can be achieved

[LAFD]

David,

Those who wish to see what is happening with (at least some) emergency vehicles in Los Angeles, can follow @LAFD:

http://twitter.com/LAFD

We were humbled by Mr. Dorsey's mention of our effort in a keynote:

http://lafd.blogspot.com/2008/06/jack-dorsey-lafd-breaking-news-via.html

...and humbled to know that L.A. has some of the most Twitter-aware baristas in town:

http://lafd.blogspot.com/2008/10/hannah-montana-god-and-lafd.html

We also look forward to Part II.

Respectfully Yours in Safety and Service,

Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department

LAFD Blog: http://LAFD.ORG/BLOG

[Photo Sharing]

Really interesting to see the original Twitter drawing!

[Pangoo]

RT "Twitter: It's for everybody" 。
-------

[accountant]

simple ideea, big business. i think that this it will be the trend in the future. ciao from romania.

jabber didn't exist 10 years ago.

[David Sarno]

Previous commenter: see this info page at XMPP.org - http://xmpp.org/about/

[@davidcmolina]

Jack, Biz y Ev son geniuses! I love that history. The revolutionary concept always starts on a hunch, on a yellow writing pad in some room, somewhere. Ideas are modified to grow (adjust fire) and so now Twitter has evolved. A success story indeed!

Saludos desde Portland, Oregon! Siguen adelante!

David