Twitter has considered selling usernames to generate new revenue as its owner, Elon Musk, tries to revive the company, two people with knowledge of the scheme said.
Twitter employees have been in talks since at least December about selling some of the usernames for the service, the people said. Engineers have talked about holding online auctions where people can bid on the usernames, which are the words, numbers or strings that follow the @ sign that identify accounts on the platform. For example, Mr. Musk’s username is @elonmusk.
It’s unclear whether the project will go ahead and whether the plan will affect all usernames or just a subset, the people said. But Mr Musk said last month he wanted to start eliminating inactive accounts on Twitter and freeing up 1.5 billion usernames. Only certain usernames, such as those of famous people, brands and popular names, can have value.
The social media company has been in turmoil since Musk bought it for $44 billion in October. Given the high price tag of the deal, the billionaire is under pressure to make the purchase a success.
Musk has since slashed spending at Twitter, ordered layoffs, reduced other costs and halted supplier payments. At the same time, he has been trying to find new ways to make money as Twitter experiences a sharp drop in ad revenue. He’s come up with a revamped subscription so users pay for verification badges, and the company has filed paperwork with the Treasury Department to process payments.
On Elon Musk’s Twitter
Mr Musk has said he has visions of creating “an everything app”, similar to WeChat in China, which more than a billion people use to find news, connect with friends, make payments and buy food. to order.
Unique usernames – also known as handles – can be lucrative. They are often claimed by early adopters of social media platforms and some people and brands are willing to pay thousands of dollars for them. Black markets have sprung up where people can purchase “original gangster” or OG, usernames that are desired because they contain a short word or number and may have been left behind by their owners.
Twitter and Mr Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
from Twitter regulations prohibit the buying and selling of handles. The trade has attracted hackers before. In 2020, a 17-year-old in Florida was arrested after hacking into Twitter to obtain usernames to sell, compromising Mr. Musk’s and celebrity accounts.
Telegram, a popular messaging platform, said it would let people auction their handles in October.
Four days after acquiring the company in October, Mr. Musk that he “Surelylook to delete accounts that have been inactive for a year, some of which have coveted usernames. In December, he said Twitter would release account names those were “Obvious account deletions with no tweets and no login for years.”
His plan inflamed worries among some who feared the company would delete the accounts of people who had died and whose Twitter pages were used to memorialize them. As of July — the last time the company reported financials — Twitter had nearly 238 million daily active users seeing ads.
Twitter also continues to lay off employees. Mr. Musk has cut the company’s workforce by about 75 percent from the 7,500 employees it had when he took over. Last week, new layoffs hit dozens of workers, including advertising engineers and trust and safety staffers, three people with knowledge of the cuts said. The Information previously reported the layoffs.
This week, Mr. Musk, who also heads the electric car maker Tesla, told Twitter employees that he was available for meetings after he had completed “most of my Tesla work.” He reminded them that he must approve all product design and engineering changes “no matter how minor,” according to a copy of the note, which was viewed by The New York Times.
“We will ache until we get as close as possible to the perfect product,” Musk wrote.
