Chirping About Twitter Trivia Quiz

Answer: Jack

According to a member of his team, while sitting on a slide in South Park, San Francisco, Jack Dorsey came up with the idea of a short message service during a daylong brainstorming session. Jack and the team would eventually call this SMS Twttr. Dorsey grew up in St. Louis, Missouri.

When he was fourteen he developed a keen interest in how information was disbursed to public transportation and emergency vehicles.

Answer: Biz Stone

Stone and Dorsey's creation went through a series of code names to fit the SMS product codes of five characters. Some of the names they came up with were 10958, 40404, and the Flickr-inspired Twttr. Available to only a few insiders and family at first, Twttr was tested on March 21, 2006.

Answer: False

The Inklings of Twitter go back to when Dorsey was twenty-two and working on communications for dispatching couriers, taxi cabs, and emergency vehicles. He had ideas but they weren't ready to fit a format yet. In 2000 he formed his own dispatch service company operating via the internet. Dorsey pitched his messaging ideas to Odeo.com in 2006; at the time, Odeo was looking for a way to do text messaging. Jack was snapped up by Odeo and hired as an engineer.

Answer: It was rebranded

The team at Twttr was very busy in 2006. They were closing, and starting companies, and rebranding the name Twttr.com to Twitter.com. By now Odeo, which had the use of the Twttr.com brand for a small group of people, was on its way out. Evan Williams, Biz Stone, Dorsey and other members of Odeo, formed the Obvious Corporation.

They bought Odeo, and all of its assets; Twttr.com was among the assets acquired by Stone and Williams.

Answer: "Just setting up my Twttr."

At 9:50 PM Pacific Standard Time, on March 21, 2006, Jack Dorsey typed for public viewing the first Twttr message, "Just Setting Up My Twttr." The rest, is Twitter history.

Answer: False

While they started Twitter, Evan and Biz took credit for neither the @ nor the # tag. They were both started by Twitter members to identify the specific target of a message (eg. @maxie2g0, @ev) or a phrase (eg. #HealthCareReform. #TrendingTopics). The # tag is meant to be used as a tool for finding common topic messages.

Answer: Web Award

During the 2007 South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, members of the Twitter team had the good sense to set up huge plasma screens in the hallways. Maximum traffic could now view their new form of communication in action. The 60-inch screens flashed messages from members to the awestruck crowds, and Twitter won the festival's Web Award. They accepted by saying, "we'd like to thank you in 140 characters or less. And we just did!"

Answer: T. J. Creamer

Astronaut Timothy John "TJ" Creamer tweeted this message from space on January 22, 2010:

@Astro_TJ, tweeted,
"Hello Twitterverse! We r now LIVE tweeting from the International Space Station--the 1st live tweet from Space! :) More soon, send your ?s."

Other astronauts have had messages posted on Twitter while in space, but their messages came through a second or third party. Creamer's tweets came directly from him while aboard the International Space Station via LAN Crew Support.

Answer: True

When Twttr became Twitter, according to Dom Sagallo, they had no limit on the characters per message. However, mounting bills and bugs forced them to limit the characters going out to 140 per message. This allowed for the screen name and colon before the message, satisfying the standard SMS carrier limit of 160 characters per message.

Answer: "140 Characters"

Dom Sagolla was in the group of brainstormers with Jack Dorsey on that fateful day in South Park, San Francisco when Twttr was conceived. He has since written a guide to make even a choppy tweeter like me a master at the short message format. 140 Characters is considered one of the best books on the short message form. And let's face it, SMS is all the rage.