On May 31st, 2000, I signed up with a new service called LiveJournal. I was user 4,136 which entitled me a permanent account and street cred in some alternate geeky universe which I have not yet visited. I was living in the Sunshine Biscuit Factory in Oakland California and starting a company to dispatch couriers, taxis, and emergency services from the web.
One night in July of that year I had an idea to make a more “live” LiveJournal. Real-time, up-to-date, from the road. Akin to updating your AIM status from wherever you are, and sharing it. For the next 5 years, I thought about this concept and tried to silently introduce it into my various projects. It slipped into my dispatch work. It slipped into my networks of medical devices. It slipped into an idea for a frictionless service market. It was everywhere I looked: a wonderful abstraction which was easy to implement and understand.
The 6th year; the idea has finally solidified (thanks to the massively creative environment my employer Odeo provides) and taken a novel form. We’re calling it twttr (though this original rendering calls it stat.us; I love the word.ed domains, e.g. gu.st). It’s evolved a lot in the past few months. From an excited discussion and persuasion on the South Park playground to a recently approved application for a SMS shortcode. I’m happy this idea has taken root; I hope it thrives.
Some things are worth the wait.
More from The Los Angeles Times
Naming and Twitter is an interesting story, as they let many others use the name in their apps, unlike many other companies who constantly protect anything and everything about their brand name. But as interesting, how many millions they will shell out to get Tweeter.com? That, time will tell (if the price will be disclosed when it happens).
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This is more interesting: http://web.archive.org/web/20040923002454/http://www.twitter.com/
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Good find Adam !
I agree. Names like gu.st, are often referred to as domain ‘hacks’.
Obviously, there will be some conflict of opinion on this, but I think that such names ARE merit-worthy and will become increasingly in demand in the future.
All I will add is that 2 2 hacks, like gu.st, are the main point of value for me. They ‘hang’ far better than a longer name e.g. stat.us, are obviously shorter, and seem somehow as though they were/are ‘meant to be’… i.e. were cleverly and consciously constructed, as opposed to an awkward (seeming) ‘leftover’ from a registry…
I have, among others, ri.sk and they do actually receive natural ‘type in’.. which is quite surprising, but bodes well for development..
There are those who, currently, advocate that such names will only drive business to the .com variant.. e.g. gust.com, in the case of gu.st.
There may be some foundation in this belief, but the domain market is changing, especially so later in the year when ICANN’s plans for .anythingyoulike and IDN comes to fruition.