How to buy a Twitter account?

The account https://twitter.com/domainname looks to be taken by the owner of 4.cn which looks to be a serious marketplace for domains; moreover, the chance of even offering money to obtain this account is slim to none.

There are however websites that monitor twitter accounts and will obtain them for you if they are ever dropped, deleted, or suspended; off the top of my head I can't think of the websites, but @beer was picked up with this method.

If however you are looking at a different account that does have 0 tweets and 1 follower then you can follow the user and message him to see if you can obtain the twitter account. Other than that, I do not know of any other service that controls the transaction between twitter accounts as Twitter takes no responsibility for this action.

Thanks,

Jason

Jason.tv said:

The account https://twitter.com/domainname looks to be taken by the owner of 4.cn which looks to be a serious marketplace for domains; moreover, the chance of even offering money to obtain this account is slim to none.

There are however websites that monitor twitter accounts and will obtain them for you if they are ever dropped, deleted, or suspended; off the top of my head I can't think of the websites, but @beer was picked up with this method.

If however you are looking at a different account that does have 0 tweets and 1 follower then you can follow the user and message him to see if you can obtain the twitter account. Other than that, I do not know of any other service that controls the transaction between twitter accounts as Twitter takes no responsibility for this action.

Thanks,

Jason

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Thanks for the info.

The account @domainname is an example for the specific domain that I own. I don't actually want the established account @domainname

I guess I'll follow the person and try to make contact that way.

Either way buying/selling twitter name alone is forbidden by Twitter TOS unless they(Twitter) give a special permission.

http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/0...hedomains-under-an-brand-impersonation-claim/

It is illegal to buy / sell twitter accounts afaik.

Good Luck!

Twitter is not going to ban or terminate your account for doing so, they will have no idea the @holder was contacted to sell account.

Jason

Makis.TV said:

Either way buying/selling twitter name alone is forbidden by Twitter TOS unless they(Twitter) give a special permission.

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Hmm, what if they "give it to you"? I guess this won't be as simple as paying a few bucks.

Jason.tv said:

Twitter is not going to ban or terminate your account for doing so, they will have no idea the @holder was contacted to sell account.

Jason

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Yeah it s illegal but many people do it. I wouldn't do it.

I know this by fact, Twitter describes it their TOS and I aso got a confirmation from them.
You should "sell" something else and then push your twitter handle along that, make sure though that they have a connection between them for ex. a website that uses a certain twitter username.
https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311-the-twitter-rules
Under "Spam and Abuse"

Selling user names: You may not buy or sell Twitter usernames.

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Keith said:

Hmm, what if they "give it to you"? I guess this won't be as simple as paying a few bucks.

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mwzd said:

It is illegal to buy / sell twitter accounts afaik.

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No, it is not "illegal", but it is against their terms of service.

It really bugs me how often the term illegal is used on this forum. (right up there with the interchangable use of copyright and trademark)... but I digress..

Make sure you have a strong case before you consider that brand impersonation claim mentioned in that article. Your chances of success diminish if the term is generic.

Contacting a twitter account basically alerts them to your interest in it, and if their sole intention was to sell it, you are going to get squeezed. They will also take measures to make sure they use it in the event the account is currently dormant.

I have personally been patient and have acquired a few matching twitter accounts for my domains just by waiting for them to be available. Tons of them are being squatted on, but they gradually get suspended and eventually released.

But hey you never know.... there is small chance you can obtain the account via contact but its a roll of the dice really...

RazorNF said:

I have personally been patient and have acquired a few matching twitter accounts for my domains just by waiting for them to be available. Tons of them are being squatted on, but they gradually get suspended and eventually released.

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How long do they have to be dormant before getting dropped?

No idea, but Twitter accounts can be inactive or dormant for years.

But for the ones that show "The profile you are trying to view has been suspended", I check every month or so.

I haven't found anywhere that says how long accounts stay suspended for, but I do know the ones I've picked up were all suspended at one point.

That's right RNF and they have been saying they have been so overwhelmed with requests they have not been giving any timeframe.

I think Twitter should want another revenue stream and run the exchange on their own. Let people buy and sell them and Twitter take 50 % of the sale.

Twitter needs to make money and this would be a win-win, there are people that want to buy and people who want to sell Twitter handles. They should provide a market, they probably don't see the value, the one original founder wrote a year ago he saw little value in domain names.

mwzd said:

http://www.thedomains.com/2012/06/0...hedomains-under-an-brand-impersonation-claim/

It is illegal to buy / sell twitter accounts afaik.

Good Luck!

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Yes but remember didn't stop the thousands of myspace accounts back in the day that were still sold through ebay even. lol

The other tricky part is people asking too much. I read a post on another non domain forum, where the guy asked for like $1500, the potential buyer was thinking like $100, so when the seller would not budge, the buyer sent the email to Twitter and Twitter took the handle away from the owner, they suspended it and the guy got it for free a couple months down the road. So if people are asking crazy prices they have to worry about someone getting pissed and forwarding the email to Twitter.

RazorNF said:

No idea, but Twitter accounts can be inactive or dormant for years.

But for the ones that show "The profile you are trying to view has been suspended", I check every month or so.

I haven't found anywhere that says how long accounts stay suspended for, but I do know the ones I've picked up were all suspended at one point.

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I don't know much about twitter, Do you have to have a different email address for each twitter account?

opalxx said:

I don't know much about twitter, Do you have to have a different email address for each twitter account?

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Yes

opalxx said:

I don't know much about twitter, Do you have to have a different email address for each twitter account?

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Seems like it would be best to coincide the email address with the handle. After all, we're talking domains here so it makes sense.

Let me share with you guys my experience with twitter. Someone else had the twitter account under my avatar, no tweets, only one follower, that was me. I tried to make contact with the above account but twitter won't allow it until s/he followed me too.

Eventually I wrote to twitter support and explained to them why it was so important for us to have the said account. I also provided all the evidence of TM etc. The above account was transferred to us within a couple of days on the basis that it was dormant. Probably they were not bothered to look into TM details.

equity78 said:

Let people buy and sell them and Twitter take 50 % of the sale.

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That's a good idea!