Odeo incubated Twitter before Twitter became an independent service.
Odeo was a podcast company founded by Noah Glass and Evan Williams in 2005. When Apple’s planned podcast support threatened Odeo’s business, the company encouraged employees to explore new ideas. Jack Dorsey proposed a service based on short status updates sent by text message, and the project developed inside Odeo in 2006.
The service was initially known internally as “twttr.” Several Odeo employees, including Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, helped develop it. Twitter later separated from Odeo and became its own company, allowing the messaging service to pursue a different business direction.
People sometimes describe Twitter as having been created by one person alone, but its early development involved a small group of Odeo employees. Odeo itself later became associated with the origins of the social platform rather than its long-term corporate identity.