This tidbit most recently came to light earlier this week, thanks to a tweet from Ryan Sarver, a platform and API manager at Twitter. He posted a photo of Twitter's creative director, Doug Bowman, explaining how the company's logo has developed over the years. Sarver's tweet mentioned the "evolution of the Larry the Bird logo."
The connection actually makes quite a bit of sense, if you do a little Internet stalking and connect the dots.
Twitter's co-founder is Biz Stone. A 2009 interview from The Boston Globe tells us that Stone graduated from Wellesley High School, just outside Boston. And Wikipedia tells us Stone was born in 1974.
This means Stone likely was a wide-eyed, prepubescent youth at the same time Larry Bird was leading the Boston Celtics to two NBA championships, winning three consecutive league MVP titles from 1984 to 1986.
The Beantown hoops backstory has gained a fair amount of media coverage since Sarver's tweet earlier this week. But Peter Stringer, the Celtics' director of interactive media, was aware of the connection back in August, when he had this Twitter exchange with Stone:
@peterstringer @twitter @celtics @eeegeee yes it is!— Biz Stone (@biz) August 11, 2011