Twitter squitting becomes new problem

THE LATEST earth-shattering issue to plague the online community is people nicking famous names on Twitter and trying to flog them back to their rightful owners.

Network World things that Twitter is going to become so famous and important that the situation is going to get as bad as domain name squatters who flog company names for a tidy sum.

Twitter IDs are apparently quite valuable and Twitter squatting, or squitting is becoming common. Already names like garage, wow, war, warcraft, Crisco, Coke, Pepsi, Nike, and Chevrolet are all taken.

Apparently some users are starting to receive email from squatters offering them their name back if they write a cheque.

Quite why the internet world expects a company to hand over huge amounts of money just to protect their identity online in this way is anyone's guess. It is bad enough to suggest to an outfit that it should buy every .com and .net, but then to force them to buy an address with every little faddish networking development to is a bit crazy.

For what it is worth [about 50p I reckon - Sub Ed] some Apple Fanboy has taken the name "Nick Farrell". µ

L'Inq
Network World