Twitter users reportedly may soon be able to bid on and buy usernames.
The New York Times reported Wednesday (Jan. 11) that the social media platform has considered running online auctions and selling usernames.
It is not known if such a plan would include all usernames or only some, according to the report, which cited unnamed sources and added that only the names of well-known people or brands may have value.
Since acquiring Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk has tried different ways of raising revenue and cutting costs. These include ordering layoffs, stopping vendor payments, modifying the company’s subscription plan and filing paperwork with the Treasury Department to process payments.
Popular usernames have proven to be valuable on other social media platforms, with some changing hands for thousands of dollars, and Telegram said in October that it would allow users to auction their names, the report said.
Twitter’s rules currently forbid the buying and selling of names.
Twitter owner Elon Musk said in a Dec. 9 tweet that he will free up 1.5 billion usernames that are currently held on the platform by eliminating inactive accounts.
Twitter will soon start freeing the name space of 1.5 billion accounts
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 9, 2022
As PYMNTS has reported in the months since his acquisition of Twitter, Musk has ordered 3,700 job cuts, allowed Twitter users to vote on whether he should step down as CEO and said he would do so after nearly 60% of polltakers voted yes.
He has also taken steps to prevent users from promoting other social media platforms on Twitter, offered a “100% value add” to some advertisers and engaged in a brief “war” against Apple.
Musk has also declared his intention to use the purchase of Twitter to accelerate the creation of a super app.
As PYMNTS reported Nov. 29, for his acquisition of Twitter to work out as he’d like, Musk must find some way to either supersize the company or fold it into a larger super app network.
While Twitter’s platform has struggled to turn a profit or create a money-making vertical beyond ad revenue, super apps like WeChat enjoy expansive business models that are less vulnerable to the loss of anchor client ad accounts.
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