Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Cloud usernames on Twitter

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Ever since learning about Tweet Claims, a service that checks for Twitter usernames and alerts you if they become available, I've had a list of usernames with them to check.  None have come available yet, but a popular username being checked by many people is cloud.

Since I opened an account a few weeks ago, the username cloud was listed as an inactive Twitter account.  The last tweet they did was June of last year.  However, today when I logged in this username was now showing as an active account.  The language they use isn't english, and the website link for the page is for a company with cloud in the name, but it doesn't look like a cloud computing company.

You'd have to think that the username cloud would be very popular for any cloud computing company today.

After sorting that out, it made me think to look up the username icloud to see if Apple was using it.  No, they aren't.  It's another active Twitter account by someone (again not english) who has some posts that mention Applie, iTunes and icloud.

None of the usernames I'm checking have come available yet, but most of them are inactive accounts.  No one has yet figured out how Twitter drops the usernames.  After contacting Tweet Claims, they said they sometimes find 10-20 usernames in one day, and sometimes only 1 or 2.  The names drop in cycles but no one has figured out how the cycles work.  Tweet Claims has over 8400 accounts right now of people looking for Twitter usernames.

If there is a Twitter username you want, say your company name or personal name (e.g.: DaveWoodward), there is a quicker way to possibly get it if the current user account is inactive.  There is a way to contact Twitter and let them know you have a claim for the name, and it could possibly be released to you within hours or days.  Check out the blog post about it here:

http://thoughtsaboutnothing.com/how-to-get-a-new-twitter-name/

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4 comments:

  1. Great post. Here's another valuable Twitter handle blog post: http://directmatchmedia.com/taken-twitter-name.php/comment-page-1
    From a domaining perspective the lack of an official Twitter handle policy makes me nervous. I try to grab the exact-match Twitter handle to match domains I buy. Especially around brandables I think that's super-important for sales to an end user startup or app co. I hope that when Twitter sees the exact-match url in the profile they'll at least have second thoughts. I've also been trying to add logos to my profiles.

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  2. If you have a Godaddy account, the control panel actually has a spot that encourages you to get the exact Twitter username match for each domain name you have. This must have been a Godaddy/Twitter agreement, and it must get Twitter a lot more users with the number of domains Godaddy has under management. I don't get a username for each of my domains, because it would get out of hand!

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  3. Hope it works out for you.

    I was pretty pumped when it worked for me.

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  4. Very good content aboout the cloud usernames that exist on twitter . I know about the godaddy cpanel way of creating a twitter account , it's a good feature .

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Thank you!