You may have noticed that a friend or company name does not have a page on Twitter and you were surprised. Were you tempted to register it and sell or barter for it? The term for doing that is called namesquatting. According to the Terms of Service and Rules policies of Twitter it is a breach of agreement. “Attempts to sell or extort other forms of payment in exchange for user names will result in account suspension.”
Last year there was a blog article by Stowe Boyd (@stoweboyd) titled “Can you sell a Twitter Account” on Message: Operating Manual for the Social Revolution. The username/account mentioned in his story is @AndrewBaron, who is the founder of RocketBoom (@rocketboom) who had listed his name (and followers) on Ebay. Take a look at one of their Twitter videos for a smile and bit of comic relief. If his username was suspended, it’s now back in action with close to 7,000 followers.
Bottom line: NO, you cannot sell or barter a username/Twitter name. Yet…click to read the story of one who sold his account recently.
Here is a thought though, have you registered your Twitter name as a dotcom, you may have thought of a great username and now want to register it as .com, .net, .us or .info You might want to do it before someone else does, don’t wait… go ahead and see if it is available, click now and see.
Read the PRWeek article: Twitter Alert to FTSE firm alledging that top twitter names for sale online.
