Was named and bought Twitter.com for $7,500 — How Twitter

Biz Stone discusses the naming of his firm.

Today at DOMAINfest in Santa Monica, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone talked regarding how they named the firm and bought the domain for $7,500.

Stone and his co-founders wanted a name that showed “urgency”. They came up with Jitter, but thought that sounded negative.

One of his partners was paging through a dictionary and found Twitter. Since Stone’s wife worked with animals, he immediately liked the name and knew its connotation.

Since Twitter.com was taken, the firm started with Twttr.com.

When Twitter started to take off they contacted the owner of Twitter.com, who was a bird enthusiast.

“We offered him $7500 or something and he was like ‘holy crap, payday!'”

Stone stated, in his defense for offering what now seems like a modest amount, they had no idea how big it was going to get. At the time he stated $7,500 was a lot of money for them.