The Zany 2006 Twitter Video Biz Stone Would Probably Rather Forget

These days, thanks to its growing ubiquity in the media, nearly everyone knows what Twitter is. But back in 2006, when it was known as Twttr, a side project of the podcasting service Odeo, no one knew what it was. So co-founder Biz Stone made a video.

As you can watch below in “Twttr 101,” dug up by Say OMG, Stone dresses up as some sort of crazy scientist with Harry Potter glasses and sports an even crazier accent. Also worth noting is that at the time, Twitter was described as a “social texting service based on the contents of you mind.” Most users today don’t realize it, but in the early days, Twitter was almost entirely based around SMS.

For those wanting to know more about Twitter’s past, you should also check out Stone’s blog post from July 2006, announcing the launch of Twttr. In it, he writes, “Jack Dorsey is one of Odeo’s brightest stars so when he told us about this idea that has been haunting him for six years we had to listen. It’s not even remotely related to audio but it’s an awesome idea so we told him to go for it.” This foresight in switching from audio idea of Odeo and going with Twitter proved to be a very smart move.