Twitter to sell off popular usernames

According to a report by The New York Times, Twitter is considering selling usernames to increase revenue. Anonymous sources close to the social network’s employees said that the company has been discussing the sale of usernames since December 2022.

The NYT notes that the company’s developers are planning to organize online auctions where everyone could bid for usernames. It is not yet known whether this idea will come true. However, even if the new idea is realized, it is unclear whether the plan will affect all usernames or only some of them.

Last month, Musk announced that the platform would soon «clean up» 1.5 billion usernames — inactive Twitter accounts will be deleted. It seems that the billionaire is too eager to avoid the social network’s insolvency in 2023.

Twitter will soon start freeing the name space of 1.5 billion accounts

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022

Currently, Twitter’s policy does not allow buying and selling usernames. However, the NYT emphasizes that people have been able to buy desired usernames on the black market for years. This practice of selling usernames has often attracted hackers. For example, in 2020, police arrested a teenager who hacked Twitter and gained access to popular accounts. The young cybercriminal hacked the accounts of many public figures, including Musk himself, former US President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and many others.

However, Twitter will not be the first social network to allow users to sell usernames at auction. On December 21, the most expensive anonymous number in history was sold on Telegram — the buyer paid 300,000 TON (about $ 730,000). The very first username at the auction was sold for $ 1.4 million.

It should be added that Twitter is working on launching its own cryptocurrency. The option will be called Coins. The new feature will allow users to be financially rewarded for posting certain tweets. The reward will be an internal Twitter token that can be purchased for fiat.