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I recently picked up Kevin Makice's book on the Twitter API (published by O'Reilly) and got a little more than I was expecting - an excellent story about the beginnings of Twitter based on some interviews given by Jack Dorsey and a blog about Twitter's beginnings, first published by Dom Sagolla back in January.

The detail Makice adds concerns former CEO Jack Dorsey's mother's obsession with bags and Dorsey's inherited obsession with "all things bag" - including the pouches associated with bicycle courier systems.  It was, according to Makice, Dorsey's fascination with this physical delivery system led him to the creation of a digital information system based on the same short message system used by dispath riders ("Courier 7 / Pickup at 104 8th Ave / deliver to Trump Tower 15th Flr Jackie").  Or in Dorsey's words:

Twitter has been my life’s work in many senses. It started with a fascination with cities and how they work, and what’s going on in them right now. That led me to the only thing that was tractable in discovering that, which was bicycle messengers and truck couriers roaming about, delivering packages.

That allowed me to create this visualization — to create software that allowed me to see how this was all moving in a city. Then we started adding in the next element, which are taxi cabs. Now we have another entity roaming about the metropolis, reporting where it is and what work it has, going over GPS and CB radio or cellphone. And then you get to the emergency services: ambulances, firetrucks and police — and suddenly you have have this very rich sense of what’s happening right now in the city. 

But it’s missing the public. It’s missing normal people. And that’s where Twitter came in.

In studying the systems, Dorsey noticed the similarities between these messages, and IM/SMS messages and decided to set up a system (built using Ruby On Rails) at Odeo, the podcasting company where he worked. Odeo employees were quickly hooked - and when Dorsey and his colleagues released their first beta version of "twttr" to the world, a phenomenon was born.

Note: I have to admit that like many people, I failed to "get" Twitter the first time.  But I get it now.  For my money, the only things standing between Twitter and a really bright future are the "whale" (the image that shows up when there are "too many tweets" flooding the system), twitter spam ("spit"?), and stalkers (irrelevant followers).  

I'm certain Twitter will get beyond the infrastructure issues - and the API hints at several ways in which third parties could begin offering easy-to-use "spit reduction" services.