Twitter sale (5)
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Apr 28, 2009
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I signed up for a Twitter username when the service came out about two years ago, and I promptly dismissed it as a meaningless, useless service. I stand by that claim. The idea behind Twitter is to post status updates, like a blog, but smaller. I already have a blog, so it's of no use to me. Another idea is to keep up with friends' status updates, but I can do that by reading email and blogs. Another idea is to keep a public record of conversations, but I fail to see the point in that. No matter how much I think about it, Twitter is something I will never understand.
However, in my infinite wisdom (or my unending desire to use my initials for everything -- hence ddhr) I signed up for a nice short username: twitter.com/dh. I posted about three messages, most of which went something like, "I still don't understand Twitter." Every month or so I would get an email saying that some new person was following me, which seemed odd because I hadn't posted anything for over two years. People were following the status updates of a person who never updated his status, adding to my failure to understand Twitter.
Last week I received an email from a guy who said one of his "clients" was interested in purchasing my Twitter username/password. He asked me to name my price. I laughed. How can you put a price on something that has no value? But since it apparently was valuable to someone else, I pulled a number out of the air: $500. My emailer consulted with his client and said, "Sounds good." This sounded all too much like a scam, so I asked him how I could trust him to not just take my password and not pay me. He whipped up a quick legal-ish agreement on paper, signed it, emailed it to me, and asked me to sign it and fax it back. I figured I could trust a person with his own fax number. Plus, I didn't really stand much to lose. I'd be giving up my username and password for a service I had no use for. It wasn't necessarily a win-win, but it certainly wasn't a lose-lose.
Long story short, I signed the agreement, emailed him my password, and promptly received a $500 PayPal payment. I still can't believe it worked. My emailer said this type of thing happens more often than you'd imagine, similar to the purchase of domain names. Still, I don't quite understand what kind of person/company would want to pay money for a username on a third-party website. It makes sense to buy a domain name because your dot-com typically represents your company or brand. But I can't imagine your twitter-dot-com-slash should really be used as your official moniker. Oh well. Me: $500; Twitter: $0. #technology
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Comments:
2009-04-29 14:33:58
Sweet!! Can I borrow $250.00? ;)
2009-04-30 10:19:47
Sure. Just send me the username and password to your bank account.
2009-05-01 07:05:49
You'll have to see who felt the "dh" was worth $500.
2009-05-01 08:12:20
You'll be reporting this on your taxes next year, right? ;-)
2009-05-01 08:40:07
I was thinking about the tax aspect the other day. I suppose I have to report it now because I went and broadcast it to the entire universe on my blog.
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