Secrets Twitter Doesn't Want You To Know

Today, Twitter has a streamlined, simple homepage that appeals to all ages and is easy to use. The original homepage, didn't quite manage that.

Instead of the cute blue bird we know today, Twitter (then called "Twttr") at the time opted for a logo that looked like it was made from Nickelodeon gak and alien vomit. It debuted in 2006 and had a real Poochie quality to it, trying far too hard to be cool. From their use of the phrase "What up?" to the fake graffiti font to their hatred of vowels, the page seemed designed to make everyone over 25 avert their eyes in disgust. At the top of the page, they claimed, "If you have a cell and can txt, you'll never be bored again ... E V E R!"

Twttr's case against boredom was questionable since the first tweets were far from scintillating. You would read updates like "enjoying the music of my friends" or "waiting for slow bagel. Board meeting in 20." Boredom annihilated! But soon, Twitter succumbed to the necessity of vowels and adapted a more streamlined look and logo more similar to what we know today.

Before iTunes cast a final nail in the Odeo coffin, they were already having a range of problems. No matter how hard they pushed, they couldn't drum up interest in podcasting. The Odeo office had mics set up, and they encouraged their employees to create content for the platform, but no one did. Even the people whose jobs depended on the success of a podcasting site had no interest in recording their thoughts on audio.

Then, the creators started fighting. Evan Williams and Noah Glass cofounded the company, Biz Stone was later brought on, but Jack Dorsey (originally hired as a freelance engineer) became friends with Williams and Glass and kept gaining influence as the cofounders grew apart. Glass was seen yelling at Williams in front of employees, "I should be running this f***ing company! I could do a much better job than you. You don't know what the f*** you're doing!"

In addition to warring founders, the employees had no organization and had a disdain for any kind of company policy. The vice president would hold a stand-up meeting. Sadly, it didn't involve a tight five about what the deal was with airplane food, but just had employees stand for a quick overview of the day. Two employees refused to stand, for no real reason. So, they switched it to sitting meetings. The two guys would then stand in protest every time.

With tensions between founders, a product nobody used, and employees that loved acting like jerks, as Jack Dorsey put it, "Odeo is a f***ing mess."

Though Williams and Glass started Odeo, and Williams, Glass, Stone, and Dorsey were the strongest forces behind the transition to Twitter, if you read about the company's history, Glass has almost been cut out of Twitter's inception entirely.

Noah Glass and Jack Dorsey became close friends, and according to Glass, they hashed out the initial idea for Twitter together. Glass was the one scouring dictionaries until he found the perfect name for the company. Plus, employees all agreed that though the basic idea was Dorsey's, it was Glass's enthusiasm that pushed the company forward. Investor George Zachary said, "There were two people who were really excited [about Twitter]: Jack and Noah Glass. Noah was fanatically excited about Twitter. Fanatically! Evan and Biz weren't at that level. Not remotely."

But Glass wouldn't last long. He was enthusiastic, but he did have a temper. Prone to yelling at Williams and other employees and also letting his ongoing divorce disrupt his moods at work, Dorsey threatened to quit if Glass wasn't fired. Dorsey made this request after his friend Glass confided in him that he was scared Williams was going to force him out of the company.

So, though he was so valuable to Twitter's beginnings, Glass was fired, and Dorsey became chief executive. Glass was upset by the whole ordeal. "I felt betrayed by my friends," he said, "by my company, by these people around me I trusted and that I had worked hard to create something with. I was a little shell-shocked. I was like, 'Wait ... what's the value in building these relationships if this is the result?'"

Though the management situation at Twitter may have been fraught, they created a powerful social media tool. But the things people like most about the site weren't created by Twitter but by the users themselves. Retweets, for example. Twitter never meant to have retweets, but users started adding "RT" and the username of the original tweeter to send around other people's pithy messages. Twitter saw it was a huge success, so they made it a technical feature of the site, so you could just press a button to share someone's comedic status about waiting at the DMV.

But retweets weren't all. Twitter initially had no way for users to respond to each other, until somebody figured out that putting "@" then the username could be a way for people to exchange messages.

Twitter didn't even think of hashtags! Chris Messina tweeted one day, "How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp ?" Oh, how sweet, he called it a pound sign. The idea for grouping things together with a pound sign caught on, and Stowe Boyd came up with the name "hash tags." Now, hashtags are an integral part of our vocabulary, and we are so very grateful. #blessed

The Internet is full of trolls and people who will say horrible things for no good reason, but they tend to thrive best with Twitter. A study found that 88 percent of abusive social media occurs on Twitter. It's not hard to believe. Gamergate revolved around some women who criticized some video games for being sexist then got rape and death threats. Some even had to leave their homes for fear they'd be killed by rabid gamers.

Leslie Jones received a barrage of vile racists comments that led her to stop using Twitter for a while, and Sue Perkins, a British comedian and TV host, suggested that maybe she could host Top Gear, then had to leave Twitter because she got too many death threats.

Australia's Next Top Model judge Charlotte Dawson spoke out against cyberbullying then was targeted in a whirlwind of Twitter hate. People sent her pictures of dead bodies, made fun of her for not having children and tweeted things like "Please do the world a favor go hang yourself.#diecharlotte" and "Should hang herself. B**** already caused enough trouble and doesn't deserve that much fame #c***suckingb****es." After the harassment hit its peak, Dawson tweeted "Hope this ends the misery," "You win," then she tried to commit suicide. She was rushed to the hospital and survived the attempt but killed herself two years later at the age of 47.