We are all aware of how, in the history of naming we have witnessed some impressive turnovers, so far as we are now "xeroxing" a paper, "hoovering" the dust on the carpet or reaching for a "kleenex" to wipe those tears away. But these examples have transformed the brand names into an infinitive verb or a noun, while Twitter has created (or created the platform for) a whole semantic familly of words around its brand.
Don't just take my word, "google" it! When you search on the web for "twitterverse", not only that the results are abundent, but the first two links are of a website that has declared it has no affiliaton to the company, just that they are big fans and that of an entry in the urban dictionary explaning twitterverse as "The cyberspace area of twitter. This naturally extends beyond twitter.com to anywhere you can twitter, which includes cell phones."(source)
The search for Twitterati brings you again a lot of hits, all connected to the micro-blogging network, the urban dictionary entry and even the Wired's guide to the UK developer Twitterati (source). The versatile nature of the word allows any termination to be added to it, therefore, the possibilities of making new Twitterwords are incredible. The media did not wait long to explore this and the publicity gained by the company started pouring in waves of articles and internet references.
But how was the naming process? Jack Dorsey, the creator of the company lets us behind the scenes: "We wanted to capture that in the name — we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word 'twitch', because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But 'twitch' is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word 'twitter' and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information', and 'chirps from birds'. And that’s exactly what the product was."(source)
This aspect of naming brought to the branding scene by Twitter may well become one to be taken into consideration in naming brainstormings, considering, of couse the nature of the product/service and if the versatileness works for its benefit or not. As for example, Botoxverse would surely not be brought up with a good connotation in an article.
© Mihaela Brebenel, 2009