Twitter name squatters lose

Almost like the domain game of 1995, I grabbed some of the best Twitter usernames, because I could see value in their use in the future. […]

Last night, “celtics” was pulled from me. You moved my account to “bc fan news“. I’m running a fan account with news on the Boston ‘Celtics’. […] In prior weeks, I lost ’stanford’ and ‘bostoncollege’. Why not give them [The Boston Celtics] the username ‘bostonceltics’ instead? Why was my ‘celtics’ one swiped? Why was anyone’s username swiped?

I had no idea that the terms of service (what? did you read them?) included that Twitter reserves “the right to reclaim usernames on behalf of businesses or individuals that hold legal claim or trademark on those usernames,” and I think that’s great. It makes Twitter look pretty ridiculous when Britney’s account has to be “therealbritney,” to use the most famous example — if you just know that she has a page, but don’t know its name, the only way you can find it is a Google search, and that’s just not right.

Sure, it’s a little troublesome that the decision process is completely opaque and we have to assume they decide who’s the “rightful” owner of a user name based on the highest bidder, but what can you expect? This is a private business; they’re not going to ask the World Intellectual Property Organization to arbitrate disputes.