Bots are crawling new domain registrations and namesquatting Twitter handles

[cletus]

I haven't seen anyone ask the obvious question: just how many of Twitter's ~175 million accounts [1] are simply bots for this and other reasons?

I haven't used my Twitter handle in the better part of a year (I tried it; sorry but for me it's just a glorified link aggregator and not a particularly interesting one at that) but somehow I still get people following me.

Number of users for a site like Twitter is no doubt an important metric. It probably comes up in funding rounds. Those funding rounds will probably have goals/targets for Twitter to reach. Twitter has, to my knowledge, only ever stated the number of accounts, rather than the 7 or 30 day actives.

This all begs the question: does Twitter have a vested interest in inflating their own numbers such that they like bot auto-registration and, well, anything that increases the account total?

[1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-how-many-use...

[retube]

> Twitter has, to my knowledge, only ever stated the number of accounts, rather than the 7 or 30 day actives.

I can't believe a VC sticking $100m into a social network like twitter doesn't demand very detailed breakdowns on user metrics.

[pyre]

s/begs the question/raises the question/g

note: this is only an attempt to be informative, not sarcastic or a smart ass.

[gyardley]

What a great opportunity for a registrar to differentiate themselves! They could tell you if your handle is available on popular social media services before you register your domain, and then help you sign up for your handle simultaneously with your registration.

[slouch]

Godaddy already tells me to get twitter when I buy a domain.

[highace]

As well as Twitter are there any other services that should be signed up for ASAP to avoid problems like this? Facebook, Youtube, Tumblr?

[corin_]

My (perhaps inaccurate) feeling is that it is most important for Twitter. In my experience most people (except perhaps those both very familiar with the website and pretty techy) are unlikely to try and go directly to a URL for most services based on a name, e.g. typing in www.facebook.com/ycombinator, or whatever the youtube/tumblr/etc equivilents are. Whereas for twitter, if you think you know the name, or even if you just think you have a good guess, lots of people will type it right into the address bar.

Maybe this is because Twitter, right from launch, had a very clear link between "if this is their username, it's also their display name, and also their URL", whereas other services, while they might have done the same thing (often as a post-launch change), it was sold more as a "this makes links look nicer" rather than as a "go straight to an account easily" feature.

[Joakal]

Domain names of course! And get a trademark or several. The latter has more leeway to the point of people blogging about losing their handlers on the online platforms due to trademark rules or something.

Seek your own legal advice with Trademarks. The good advice should include handling 'typo' handlers possibly impersonating your service. eg YCOMBlNATOR.com

[DomainNoob]

I'd like to see a HN discussion of what people think Twitter should do about all the unused Twitter handles or those that were obviously abandoned after a few tweets back in 2009. -Should Twitter charge a nominal fee, say $1 a year for an account? -Should a domain name 'trump' an unused Twitter handle, ie. a way for domain owners to acquire unused Twitter handles?

[blatherard]

According to a commenter on the linked page, you can file an impersonation report and will likely get it resolved.

[icebraining]

Am I the only one slightly worried about this? I mean, they aren't really impersonating anyone, since the Twitter handle was created before the website was even online.

First come, first served may suck sometimes, but at least it's a clear, well-defined and fair way of allocating handles.

Before registering your personal handle, have you checked if someone had the domain?

[moe]

I tried to have a twitter handle released recently and no, they don't process individual requests anymore unless you have a trademark or other legal title.

[duggan]

Spotted that, fingers crossed!

Still worth being aware of if your case isn't quite open-and-shut, or you're planning a quick launch. I feel quite an eejit for letting it happen.

[paulca]

Registered a new domain today that I'd like the Twitter name for ... good heads up Ross, thanks!

[duggan]

Just to bring some resolution to this, I received a response from Twitter today and, as I suspected, the namesquatting policy does not apply in my situation.

Disappointing (since I have a small group of useless domains now, .com, .net and .org) but a useful lesson.

[riffic]

Twitter's namespace problem is inherent to a single party controlling a centralized service.

If you want to truly own and control your own namespace, you should support services that are distributed, like the rest of the Internet.

[glimcat]

Is it just me that always registers Twitter at the same time as the domain?

[user-id]

/me squats @glimcat

[ra]

You registered your twitter handle 11 years ago!

[Hisoka]

Thanks for reminding me to register a Twitter handle for my new site.. Glad noone squatted it.