Bea Beltran Tech 01.12.2023 05:Jan AM EST

Twitter Might Auction Popular Usernames Off, Reports Say

Twitter is still trying to find ways to make some money since its current revenue might not be enough to keep it from sinking. The company has thought of an idea that might just patch a hole or two on the ship, and that's selling popular names to the highest bidder.

Whatever Helps Twitter

The intention was first thought of back in December when the employees of Twitter began floating the idea of selling usernames. It's not a terrible idea. It would be cool if you didn't have to add numbers or extra letters to your username to resemble your actual name.

However, this is still not a sure thing, or at least not until Elon Musk impulsively tweets about it. Aside from having no official announcements, Gizmodo mentions that it's unclear how the conversations about it went.

Since it's still being talked about, we can't know for sure if existing popular usernames will be auctioned off whether it's active or inactive. We do know that Elon Musk plans to remove inactive accounts, which will free up around 1.5 billion usernames.

It's probably not going to apply to all the usernames, just the ones that can be used by famous people, companies, or organizations. For instance, Taylor Swift's Twitter username is @taylorswift13. It could be because she loves the number 13, or because @TaylorSwift is taken.

As of right now, the @TaylorSwift username is actually in use, but the account has already been suspended. This also goes for other usernames like @johnnydepp, which could be used by anyone anyway since Johnny Depp has no Twitter account, yet it's still suspended.

Why Twitter is Even in Trouble

Even with someone who was once the richest person alive on Earth, $44 billion is still a huge amount of money. After the purchase, Musk is determined to make sure that he didn't spend billions of dollars on a dying company, as pointed out by The New York Times.

With a billion dollars in payment for interest yearly hanging over your head, you'll be looking for revenue streams too. However, it is not going the way the Twitter CEO had hoped. The company was bleeding more money than it was earning.

Musk tried to minimize the company's spending by laying off most of its staff, but that just led to more trouble since obviously, you'll need staff to handle a huge platform like Twitter, or at the very least keep it from becoming a cesspool of insensitive content.

This led to Twitter losing advertisers under its belt. Considering that the social media platform got most of its revenue from advertising, it was beyond bad news. Several big names left Twitter after losing confidence due to the way Twitter was handling its content moderation.

The Twitter CEO is still attempting to catch up on Twitter's bills with Twitter Blue, wherein users will have to pay to be verified, or get the famous check mark that indicates legitimacy. While the others have no choice but to comply, some decided to leave the platform for good.