MSNBC’s Digital Life blog dug up a bit of trivia that might be interesting to both Celtics fans and Twitter users.

Twitter’s ubiquitous little blue bird, which appears on the website and acts as the company’s logo, was named after Celtics great Larry Bird. Twitter employee Ryan Sarver reminded folks of that with a tweet on Monday:

.@stop going over Design @ Twitter. The evolution of the Larry the Bird logo pic.twitter.com/VBIqz7jC — Ryan Sarver (@rsarver) February 27, 2012

A bird named Larry might not mean that Twitter’s bird was named after THE Larry Bird, but Twitter co-founder Biz Stone confirmed as much to Celtics.com head Peter Stringer in August of 2011. Stringer asked if the Twitter bird was named after the Celtics legend and got a reply of, “yes it is!”


While it’s not new information, it’s probably a surprise to many that Larry Bird was the inspiration for the logo of one of the rising companies in social media.