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.