Twitter Was Almost Called Smssy (And Almost Looked Awful Too)

If you’ve ever thought Twitter was a silly name, be grateful that’s what they settled on. During the research for a new book about the site, Nick Bilton has unearthed some of the early name and logo ideas, and they… they aren’t pretty.

According to a post on Bilton’s blog, the founders of Twitter bounced around plenty of ideas, and most — but not all — of the logos for were created by co-founder Biz Stone. There are some shockers in there. Stone played around with the big green speech bubble (not too bad), as well as a “retro Atari vibe” for a vowelless Twttr (which deserves to be filed in the trash).

Worse is co-founder Noah Glass’s effort, pictured above. The wet and bubbly looking green letters, oozing pustules of bad design, apparently “inspired youthfulness” for Glass. He apparently insisted that this was close to a final design, claiming that “old is boring, and nothing is worse than boring.” Needless to say, it was shelved in favour of Linda Gavin’s rather more memorable blue logo.

Apparently reaching the final name was no easy task, either. Before hitting on Twitter, the team tried Twitch, Smssy and even, umm, Friendstalker. Turns out they made the right call. [Nick Bilton]