Curated By: Shaurya Sharma
Last Updated: November 05, 2023, 08:28 IST
San Francisco, California, USA
X could be planning big things for old Twitter handles.
X’s team is reportedly working on a “marketplace,” which will feature purchasable old usernames for as much as $50,000. Here are the details.
Elon Musk has brought a transformative effect on X (formerly Twitter). Not only have we seen the platform rebranded, but it has also changed core functionality, including how blue checkmarks work—mostly influenced by the addition of X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue). Now, the platform could be reportedly bringing yet another addition in the form of selling old non-active X handles.
As per a report by Forbes, X’s team has started working on a “marketplace,” which will feature purchasable usernames of people. The publication further claims that X went above and beyond, even claiming as much as $50,000 from potential buyers for a potential username purchase.
These details were revealed through various emails seen by Forbes, and they came from “active X employees and noted that the company recently made updates to its @handle guidelines, process, and fees.” Notably, Elon Musk has been interested in implementing this program for a while now.
Back in November 2022, shortly after acquiring X for $44 billion dollars, Musk had said that he was planning on “freeing them up next month,” and that he was aware that many handles were taken up by “bots and trolls.” As a result, Twitter employees at that time started taking initiative the following month and planned to free up over 1.5 billion usernames. Later in May, X started removing inactive accounts from the platform.
It remains to be seen if or when this actually gets implemented, but this could certainly be useful for users to get access to certain username for a cost.
