Twitter’s original internal project name before its public launch in 2006 was twttr.
The name reflected an early design choice to remove vowels, producing a short label suitable for text messaging and compact interfaces. The project emerged inside Odeo, a podcast company co-founded by Evan Williams, Noah Glass, Jack Dorsey, and Biz Stone.
Twitter’s first public version appeared in 2006, and the service initially used the spelling “twttr” in its branding and short-code context. The company later adopted the fully spelled name “Twitter,” which became the dominant public identity.
A common mix-up is confusing “twttr” with Odeo. Odeo was the parent company and earlier podcasting business; twttr was the internal name of the new short-message service. The unusual spelling also preceded the later 280-character era by many years.