When it comes to Twitter and my social media “empire”, one thing I’m glad to have is “markevans” as my username as opposed to “markwevans” or “canadamark”. Given Twitter’s popularity and my interest in building a digital brand, it’s something I wouldn’t sell…unless someone offered some extremely serious dinero.
That said, it should not come as a surprise that there’s an emerging market for Twitter usernames – even if Twitter doesn’t officially sanction these kind of transactions. For some people and companies, there’s a lot of value in having the right username to establish and protect personal and corporate brands.
A company looking to leverage this activity is tweexchange, which has created a marketplace to exchange, buy or find Twitter usernames. While it’s difficult to believe Twitter usernames will have the same value as URLs, tweexchange is counting on there being enough demand to build a market.
Right now, for example, you could buy “whitehouseobama” for $500, or “money” for $1,000. That’s fairly serious coin for a username but as Twitter becomes more established, you never know how the market could evolve.
5 Comments
I think that I will simply stick with my name – saves time and money.
Thanks,
Nate
I thought that this was against their TOS? I'll have to read it again to be sure.
I think Twitter's TOS has something against squatting but not sure there's anything against selling a username. Let me know if you find out otherwise.
I revisited the TOS (http://twitter.com/terms) and you are right — there is no mention of trading or selling of usernames.
Somebody had mentioned this to me before, so I'll try to track down if this may have been the case in the past, or if the reference was erroneous.
Morale: fact-checking before sprouting nonsense is the better way to go
If you believe, as I do, that Twitter is going to capitalize on the emergence of social search by topics, which will draw a great deal of attention, then usernames that align with their business strategy are going to become very valuable…Anyone who has not yet registered their own names…for a Twitter presence is very foolish, in the long run…even if you have no time to practice.
Watch as prices move higher..for smart twitter real estate.