To avoid bankruptcy, Twitter plans to sell usernames to generate new and increased revenue. The idea took shape among employees last December and engineers are encouraging online auctions where people can place their bids.
Quick Facts
- Usernames will be auctioned in the form of words, numbers, or a string of characters placed after the @ sign on Twitter handles. For example, Mr. Musk’s user name is @elonmusk.
- It is not known whether the plan would include all usernames or only a few
- Musk revealed that he wants to remove inactive accounts on Twitter and spare 1.5 billion user names
To avoid bankruptcy, Twitter plans to sell usernames to generate new and increased revenue. The idea took shape among employees last December and engineers are encouraging online auctions where people can place their bids.
Only the usernames of celebrities, businesses, and other well-known brands or individuals have value. The social media giant suffered a massive downfall after Musk purchased it for $44 billion in October 2022.
The CEO has, ever since, made significant cuts to the budget, implemented brutal layoffs, and blocked basic amenities at the workplace. Simultaneously, he is brainstorming new ways to aid losses in the advertising department.
He introduced a paid subscription plan called Twitter Blue that enables users to receive verification badges, and the company has reportedly exchanged paperwork with the Treasury Department to initiate payments.
In addition, the tech mogul revealed his desire to create an “everything app,” resembling China’s WeChat, a popular app to find news, make payments, connect with people, and order food.
Can Twitter make money by selling usernames?
Unique Twitter handles can have high demand among users of the platform. Early adopters of social media platforms are usually the ones to claim these usernames first.
Some people and brands are willing to pay a lot of money for them. Now, black markets have taken over the situation where people can purchase “original gangster,” or O.G., user names because they are shorter and might be inactive after being abandoned by the user for a long time.
Musk hasn’t commented on the matter yet. However, Twitter rules currently prohibit buying and selling of handles. Even hackers are drawn in by the profitability of the business.
In 2020, a 17-year-old in Florida was arrested for hacking Twitter and collecting usernames that he intended to sell. Many accounts including that of Musk were compromised.
Four days after acquiring the company, Elon Musk tweeted that he wants to purge accounts reporting inactivity for a year, as some of them have desirable usernames. Two months later, he revealed that the platform would be free of accounts that were “obvious account deletions with no tweets & no log-in for years.”
Unfortunately, it also led to unrest among some people who didn’t want the company to delete the accounts of people who have passed away as those Twitter accounts serve as memorials. As of July 2022, Twitter reported having around 238 million people actively using the site.
If the plan moves forward, it could churn out some revenue if not save Twitter from going bust. Meanwhile, the popular messaging app Telegram is also planning to allow users to auction their handles.
Twitter continues to cut costs and fire employees
Despite the launch of Musk’s new money-making endeavor, Twitter Blue, the company is not recovering anytime soon. The CEO is undertaking emergency measures to ease up its finances which includes laying off employees until further notice.
The company’s workforce has reduced to 25 percent from the 7500 employees it had back in October 2022. Frequent layoffs have afflicted dozens of workers mostly engineers working on advertising and other employees on trust and safety.
Musk has reportedly snubbed Twitter employees to oversee his responsibilities at the electric automobile company Tesla. He dropped an email to his employees on Twitter stating his availability for meetings only after he was done with his Tesla-related duties.
He spoke about the importance of him approving product designs and engineering changes in the EV giant despite the responsibilities that await him in his declining $44 billion dollar company.
