Twitter: [1]
Jack Dorsey introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. The original project code name for the service was twttr, inspired by Flickr and the five-character length of American SMS short codes. The developers then came across the word 'twitter'. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from.
Goggle: [2]
The creators of Google, Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine "BackRub", because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word "googol" the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine wants to provide large quantities of information for people.
Facebook: [3]
Facebook originally was mean to be a directory with photos and basic information about students. It started as an internal friendship network for students of Harvard College. The name Facebook was inspired from the custom of universities in USA to give their newly enrolled students a paper Facebook introducing people on the Campus to them.
Yahoo: [4]
Yahoo was originally named “Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web". The Guide was a directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In April 1994, Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web was renamed "Yahoo!" The crators realized they needed a name that took less than three minutes to say, so they switched to a word they liked from the dictionary – one that described someone who was “rude, unsophisticated, and uncouth.” And that’s how Yahoo! was born.
Yelp!: [5]
Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO and co-founder of Yelp said this when asked how Yelp got its name:
"David Galbraith (a guy in Max's incubator MRL Ventures who was helping us with Yelp in the early days) found it on his own. It was available for purchase from a squatter for 5k. Russ and I didn't immediately like the name since it was 'the sound of a dog being kicked' and I was strangely enamoured with 'yocal' - a terrible name. Fortunately Scott Bannister (another guy hanging out in the incubator, who was also involved in the naming of PayPal) immediately loved it. He told us he'd buy it and sell it to us the next day when we came to our senses. In the ensuing discussion Jared Kopf (yet another incubator employee) put down his redit card and actually bought the domain. The next day it was transfered to the company (we paid back Jared) and the rest is history."
Wikipedia: [6]
"Wiki" means quick in Hawaiian. The Wiki Wiki Bus is Honolulu International Airport's shuttle, and has shuttled people between the Main Terminal and the Domestic/International Terminals since the mid-1960s. The "pedia" part is from the word encyclopedia. Wikipedia, then, means ----> quick encyclopedia
Amazon:[7]
Jeff Bezos the creator of Amazon wanted a name for his company that began with "A" so that it would appear early in alphabetic order. He began looking through the dictionary and settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" and it was the river he considered the biggest in the world, as he hoped his company would be.
Works Cited:
[1]: 140charcters.com. Story: How twitter was born.
http://www.140characters.com/2009/01/30/how-twitter-was-born/
[2]: Wikipedia: Google
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google#cite_note-35
[3]:Wikepedia: Facebook
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook
[4]Wikepedia: History of Yahoo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Yahoo!#cite_noteDavid_G._Thomson_2006_155-2
[5]Quora: “How did Yelp Get Its name”
http://www.quora.com/Yelp/How-did-Yelp-get-its-name
[6]Answers.com: WikiAnswers
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_does_the_name_'Wikipedia'_come_from
[7]Wikipedia: Amazon.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com
