information Twitter may finally be ready to monetize premium Twitter handles

[equity78]

According to a report by The New York Times it looks like Elon Musk shares an opinion that myself and some others in domaining have held on Twitter handles. The good ones are worth money. Mike first wrote back in 2009 about a TechCrunch story that said, “Twitter handles are quickly becoming as desirable as domains”. A new service just lauched this week called Tweexchange, a … [Read more...]

 

[bmugford]

And what exactly constitutes an "inactive" account?

Exactly. What defines it is whatever their definition is.
You are completely at their whim.

Would a company that is struggling financially turn down an offer of potentially hundreds of thousands (or more) for a handle actually in use? Who knows.

The bottom line though is you really have no protection from that happening either as a financial or punitive move.

Brad

 

[bmugford]

According to a report by The New York Times it looks like Elon Musk shares an opinion that myself and some others in domaining have held on Twitter handles. The good ones are worth money. Mike first wrote back in 2009 about a TechCrunch story that said, “Twitter handles are quickly becoming as desirable as domains”. A new service just lauched this week called Tweexchange, a … [Read more...]

It sounds alright in theory, but this could go down a potentially dangerous path. There is absolutely nothing protecting your existing handle.

Could a private company hand over your premium handle for the right offer? Sure.

Especially one that has a large financial hole to fill, and is now operated by someone who is so erratic.

Twitter has considered selling user names to generate new revenue as its owner, Elon Musk, tries to resuscitate the company’s business, two people with knowledge of the plan said.

Brad

 

[NickB]

Twitter handles are different in that it's not against their terms of service to sell them.

That's BS - It is against their Tos

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-username-squatting

"Attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are also violations and may result in permanent account suspension."

 

[pb]

Not great that obviously, but if you weren't actually using it then perhaps that's part of their criteria for taking it back

I had been been using it, then it was inactive but I had plans to use it. I was the admin of the channel and I use telegram daily. Yet I didn't get any warning. I think it was deliberate. I don't think they will sell that name as it's a direct match of my domain, so I'm just pissed they took it away and gave my channel some random gibberish name without the ability to change it back. So I dropped the plans to use telegram for anything besides private communication.

[edit] I checked their "marketplace" at fragment.com and my channel name is up for sale for $200, along with thousands, maybe millions others that make even less sense (@asdfghjkl4p for $200 anyone?). They said in their post-factum announcement "we withdrew all public Telegram addresses linked to channels that were empty or inactive for the last year. We will gradually reintroduce 99% of these addresses into public use (...) As for the highest-valued short usernames, the most efficient and fair way to distribute them seems to be by the auction" - but in reality they just squat on ~all these handles and try to push them for min. $200 each. Let's see if they keep their promise to release 99% of them eventually...

 

[forge]

And what exactly constitutes an "inactive" account?

 

[equity78]

It sounds alright in theory, but this could go down a potentially dangerous path. There is absolutely nothing protecting your existing handle.

Could a private company hand over your premium handle for the right offer? Sure.

Especially one that has a large financial hole to fill, and is now operated by someone who is so erratic.

Twitter has considered selling user names to generate new revenue as its owner, Elon Musk, tries to resuscitate the company’s business, two people with knowledge of the plan said.

Brad

I agree with you the worry is the erratic nature of Musk. I mean there are a lot of great short names that have sat there for years, I think they should be up for sale, so people truly interested can get them. But there cannot be something like you own @brad (very valuable) and you tweet and you obey the rules and then he uses some nonsense to say you tweeted something that he deemed wrong and took your handle.

 

[bmugford]

I agree with you the worry is the erratic nature of Musk. I mean there are a lot of great short names that have sat there for years, I think they should be up for sale, so people truly interested can get them. But there cannot be something like you own @brad (very valuable) and you tweet and you obey the rules and then he uses some nonsense to say you tweeted something that he deemed wrong and took your handle.

There would need to be strict rules that are followed.

The second you suspend an account for some dubious thing, then it magically shows up for sale shortly after public trust is breached.

So for instance, if an account is suspended it should not be available for sale for a period of time, likely several years. Otherwise, the conflict of interest becomes too obvious.

Also, the definition of inactive matters. For instance if there is an account with (1) tweet 12 years ago, it is probably reasonable to say it is inactive.

You also clearly need to reset the followers. You can't suspend an account then sell it and deliver all the followers to a new owner.

This has the potential to open up Pandora's Box and be a real clusterf*ck, especially with Musk in charge.

Brad

 

[Aradhi]

Twitter handles sells since 2007,

And I know hundreds people were working in this field since long time, for Twitter, Instagram, and tiktok handles

Here a public post talked about Twitter handle @Israel in 2010 from TheGuardian.com News.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...010/sep/14/twitter-user-sells-israel-username

 

[Aradhi]

Yes, You are right,

What I also know, that Twitter seized thousands of handles in the past, with a reason to gave them to websites with trademarks, Famous People, singers, actors, club's etc, who registered in Twitter after people took the handles.
Still no problem.
BUT as for now, what kind of handles they want to sell or auctioning,
I'm sure that u won't find any quality handles available,
There's many good ones which they were registered and now suspended accounts.
BUt it's too much disturbing to seized active accounts just to make money.

many people's spent millions dollars advertising at Twitter itself, which they promoted there account through paying money direct to Twitter
So it's shitty and I see the ineligibility of Twitter to sell any handles

used handles = belongs to the accounts itself.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Telegram is selling their nice handles. Looks like it's a good gig.

YouTube just released their handles to the public. I got two 3 letter ones!

 

[pb]

Telegram is selling their nice handles. Looks like it's a good gig.

Yes, and they first stole them form users, so there's a precedent. I use telegram daily and I had a channel with a nice handle that was not active for the moment (not empty either, it had some posts) but I had plans to use it (handle matched my website). It got taken away without any warning, I found out by accident, weeks or months later. Others reported similar stories. It is likely to be the same with twitter and any other platform that decides to monetize handles.

 

[NameInbox]

Sure thay will tokenizing the handles
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FmF0sakagAAap-W?format=jpg&name=small

https://twitter.com/x/status/1612698915933138945

 

[MKA]

Sure thay will tokenizing the handles

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. This seems to be a copy of reddit's coin system, not sure what it has to do with handles.

 

[narek]

Here is a website where you can monitor your desired Twitter handle, and when it becomes available you'll receive a notification to your email.

Handle.horse - (yes, horse.)

 

[MKA]

Agreed, don't think it has to do with handles but the timing is interesting even though they have had this in the works for a while. Maybe those coins will be used to bid/purchase handles? We will see. I would assume not though as Twitter probably wants cold hard cash to increase their revenue.

It makes sense for them to monetize stuff like this, because it makes them a bit of money without negatively affecting the people who don't care about it. Same with the check-mark subscription.

But as far as the handles are concerned, I think they'll just put them up for auction, and the ones that don't sell will return to the registration pool. It's a fairly effective system, because accounts will continue to die off: businesses end, people forget their passwords, etc. so they can keep making money off this.

Here is a website where you can monitor your desired Twitter handle, and when it becomes available you'll receive a notification to your email.

Handle.horse - (yes, horse.)

Yeah...I'm not touching that with a ten foot pole.

 

[mdrn]

hope you're right
my company picked up 6 handles for our apps 2 weeks after twitter launched

if i could get 1/20 what these names sold for in .com, i'd be thrilled

The thing is we don't know if they will allow aftermarket of handles. So far the talk is about auctioning off the inactive ~1.5 billion names (elon tweeted about). But they would be silly not to monetize an aftermarket as these handles trade hands anyways. I hope they do

 

[bmugford]

Twitter handle sells since 2007,

And I know hundreds people were working in this field since long time, for Twitter, Instagram, and tiktok handles

Here a public post talked about Twitter handle @Israel in 2010 from TheGuardian.com News.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.th...010/sep/14/twitter-user-sells-israel-username

Yep, the difference here would be Twitter themselves being involved.

Because unlike you or me, Twitter has the ability to seize any handle they please for any reason.
When given a financial incentive to do that, it could quickly become an issue.

Brad

 

[NickB]

There would need to be strict rules that are followed.

The second you suspend an account for some dubious thing, then it magically shows up for sale shortly after public trust is breached.

So for instance, if an account is suspended it should not be available for sale for a period of time, likely several years. Otherwise, the conflict of interest becomes too obvious.

Also, the definition of inactive matters. For instance if there is an account with (1) tweet 12 years ago, it is probably reasonable to say it is inactive.

You also clearly need to reset the followers. You can't suspend an account then sell it and deliver all the followers to a new owner.

This has the potential to open up Pandora's Box and be a real clusterf*ck, especially with Musk in charge.

Brad

Currently their policy page states......

"We cannot release inactive usernames at this time. If a username you would like is being used by an account that seems inactive, you should consider selecting an available variation for your use on Twitter. In general, adding numbers, underscores, or abbreviations can help you come up with an available username."

"To keep your account active, be sure to log in at least every 6 months. Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity."

Technically, as long as you log in once every 6 months then the account is deemed "active"

Worth checking in every now and then to see if they change this in the future without any major notifications.....

https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/inactive-twitter-accounts

 

[MKA]

YouTube just released their handles to the public. I got two 3 letter ones!

The issue with those is that you can't trade them. You can send them between accounts that you own, but that's it. They're linked to your gmail account which you're not allowed to sell either.

The only thing you could do would be to drop the handle, delete the gmail account, and wait a month or so for the handle to be available for registration again. But at that point it becomes a risk because someone might snap it up before the potential buyer.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

The issue with those is that you can't trade them. You can send them between accounts that you own, but that's it. They're linked to your gmail account which you're not allowed to sell either.

You are quite correct. I got them because I want to use them to be fair. But I'm surprised there were any available when I got to it

 

[MKA]

You are quite correct. I got them because I want to use them to be fair. But I'm surprised there were any available when I got to it

Yeah, they don't hurt to have. And they're fairly new so you can pick up a fair amount of good ones.

 

[MKA]

That's BS - It is against their Tos

"Attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are also violations and may result in permanent account suspension."

Thank you for correcting me.

But that's odd considering how Musk spoke of them in the OP and that there's an active market for them, and it's beneficial for handles to trade users.

Imagine if you have a small company Instantservice with the handle @instant, and let's further assume that the company closes down. That premium handle will generate traffic/interest but no longer be in use. Even if twitter didn't make money off the trade it would be better is some other company would get the handle, because it would condition them to be more active on twitter.

 

[mdrn]

Will be interesting to see how prices for premium handles go. I wonder if they are considering tokenizing the handles. Also curious if they will add a royalty or straight fee when re-sold (if they can be).

 

[mdrn]

Sure thay will tokenizing the handles

https://twitter.com/x/status/1612698915933138945

Nice find

This will get interesting.