Auction of handles
50,000 euros for an account name: Musk is desperately trying to make money with Twitter
Elon Musk bought Twitter almost a year ago and has since renamed it X
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Even a year after the takeover, Elon Musk’s short message service is not making any money. Now a new measure is being taken there.
This is reported by Forbes, citing internal emails from the company. Accordingly, a team set up specifically for this purpose is said to have started to build a kind of marketplace for the account names that have been called “handles” since the Twitter era. The working group, internally dubbed “@HandleTeam”, has already sent out the first offers to potential buyers of certain handles – at a price of 50,000 dollars (around 46,500 euros).
No surprise
It’s no secret that people are considering this step. Shortly after taking over Twitter, Musk became upset after seeing the internal figures about how many handles were blocked by “bots and trolls” – and announced, as usual, full-bodied that he would release them “next month”. Almost a year later, implementation now seems to be imminent.
According to Forbes, it is not clear from the emails how exactly the sale of the trade will take place. In response to Musk’s announcement, users suggested that account holders could sell the handles to each other – with a fee to the company. Whether this would be implemented in this way cannot be determined from the emails, according to the site.
Selling Twitter handles is nothing new. So far, the entire account has to be handed over. If only the name could be sold, it would also have an advantage for the users involved: They would retain their usership and could leave the posted posts in their account instead of having to start from scratch. The advantage for X is obvious anyway: the company is not involved in the current sales – and therefore does not earn anything from them.
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Unanswered questions
If handle trading were not initiated by the users themselves, but by X, an important question would arise: How does the company decide when a handle is considered “unused” – and could therefore be released for trading again? After all, in January Musk gave a figure of 1.5 billion unused handles that could be released again.
When Twitter began deleting older accounts in May, Musk emphasized that they had not been used for several years. However, it could also be quicker: According to the terms of use, an account is considered “inactive” if it has not logged in for just 30 days in a row. However, that would be a pretty extreme interpretation to authorize a sale.
Especially since it is still unclear how the company will deal with abuse when using known handles. Numerous companies and celebrities had recently turned their backs on the service. The potential for these accounts to be misused by a new owner is therefore high.
Musk needs money
It is not surprising that X relies on such seemingly desperate measures to raise money. Since Musk’s takeover, advertising sales have plummeted, and the focus on the Blue subscription offer has not been able to compensate for these losses. The decline in value of the company is correspondingly severe: even according to the company’s calculations, X is still worth $19 billion. Musk paid $44 billion a year ago.
Sources:Forbes, New York Times, Elon Musk