An API By Any Other Name

An API By Any Other Name

The Twilio you know could have been easily been a pig-themed API.

Jeff Lawson bought Twilio.com for $7 in 2007. But Twilio was of many options on a name-storming sheet that Jeff sent to co-founder John Wolthuis.

Let’s peek into the lives Twilio could’ve had. We’ll see where these domains are now.

• TPhoney.com – This is now the home of Taylor Pass Honey, a New Zealand based honey manufacturer.

• PHISM.com  – Nearly 10 years later, this is still taken, but on the market for the right price.

• Teldigo.com – Send us the best pitch for what this website should be and we’ll give you 30% off a SIGNAL ticket.

• Teldash.com – Someone in Lelystad, Netherlands owns this domain. If you’re cruising through Lelystad, they apparently have a replica of the infamous 17th century ship, Batavia.

• Temphis.com – If you need some employee scheduling solutions, apparently Temphis can offer you that.

• Twilio.com – I think you know what happened here.

• Telphis.com – Would a Greek god of Telephony own this site? Give us the best backstory for this site and we’ll give you a SIGNAL ticket discount.

• Phringer.com –  Does this website belong to a scientist who is called in a pinch to battle overly acidic compounds. You know compounds with a high Ph balance? Pitch us, get a ticket discount.

• Telball.com  – A pool ball that can also make calls? How much would this item be in Sharper Image? Send us your guesses. The person who gets closest to the price we determined “reasonable for a fictional invention” gets discounted SIGNAL tickets.

• Ringpig.com – This was too good not to grab. When we bought this, our domain host recommended we try out “piggyringofdeath.com” as well. I think we’ll pass on that one.

• Pigtone.com – We plan on building a few pig themed conference lines in the future, so we’ll be holding on to this one. If you get to building a Pig themed conference line before we do, let us know.

• Riotring.com – Someone on Go Daddy snagged this one.

• Quball.com – This was scooped up by Enom Inc, who gobbles up a lot of domains for reselling.

• Meamer.com – Om nom nom goes Enom. They own this one as well.

Alas, Twilio is an API by any other name. But it would have been cool to ping a pig API with HTTP requests.