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Twitter username - a new domain name frenzy? August 13, 2007

Posted by geoffwolfe in : Off Topic , add a comment

Something occured to me today about Twitter that will be interesting to see if it comes to pass (I now know I’m not the first to think about this). Many companies, bloggers, jokesters, have created Twitter accounts to get their message out in micro format (check out CNN’s), and it’s pretty clear that the username is going to be important for other people to find them. Much like the race to get your domain name before a squatter did, a company’s foresight and clout may be questioned if they don’t get http://twitter.com/google (I assume someone is squatting since Google has a few similar offerings). Will we see lawsuits over trademark violations if someone is using someone else’s registered TM? Will there be a market for reselling Twitter usernames?

I started registering domain names a decade ago, but I didn’t think about generic names like business.com as being the ones with real resale value. The types of names I registered were made-up words for companies I might some day start. I actually got an unsolicited offer to sell one of my names for $2,000 to a startup security company, but of course I tried to negotiate for more. After a couple of weeks of back-and-forth email negotiations, their marketing VP decided it wasn’t really needed afterall (it was the name of one of their products). And no, I haven’t gotten any offers for it since.

I spent about 30 minutes checking to see what names are still available in Twitter. There are a few big company’s names untaken but most are snatched up (most with no tweet activity on them). Most generic names are taken as well. It would take some effort to create a bank of them for yourself as they need a unique email address for each username. Of course, we’re not talking about a quasi-public name service like ICANN managing domain names; this is a private company managing their own user-base, so Twitter can just shut you off if there is an issue. If (when) Twitter becomes more of a public good, it will be interesting to see how they manage this.