During development, the guys who invented Twitter used the term “twitch” to denote the messages. Later on, they realized that “twitch” was, from a marketing standpoint, not very good – it connotes something annoying and bothersome, and wouldn’t do for a brand name. So one of them went home one night and got out a dictionary, and went through the words that started with “tw” until he found one that looked pretty good: Twitter. A short, inconsequential burst of noise. And that’s what they went with – and to be fair, it’s a good name.