Is Elon Musk’s X preparing to sell old handles?

Elon Musk’s X seems to be preparing to sell old accounts. Musk, who purchased X, formerly known as Twitter, for just over a year ago for $44 billion, has seen his investment’s value shrink to $19 billion. The richest man in the world has been looking for ways to monetise the social media platform. Now, Forbes has reported that a team within X appears to be setting up a system to sell old accounts. Let’s take a closer look: Forbes on Friday obtained emails showing that @Handle Team is preparing to sell accounts that are no longer used.

The team has even sent out emails to potential buyers offering to sell accounts for $50,000.

The emails, which were obtained from current employees, showed that the company recently changed its @handle guidelines, process and fees. Forbes, which is in possession of the emails, did not publish them in their entirety in order to safeguard the identity of their sources. Forbes, which sent an email to X, received the following reply: “Busy now, please check back later.” This comes months after The New York Times quoted two people in the know as saying that Twitter had considered selling user names to boost revenue. The newspaper noted that Twitter employees been talking about selling user names since at least December and even considered running online auctions. It said that Musk had spoken about removing inactive accounts on Twitter and soon freeing up around 1.5 billion user names. X in May began removing inactive accounts from the platform. According to the report, early adopters of platforms sometimes take up unique user names – which in time can be of great value as people and brands are willing to shell out big bucks. “Black markets have sprung up where people can buy “original gangster,” or O.G., user names that are desired because they feature a short word or a number and may have been abandoned by their owners,” the newspaper report noted. The newspaper noted that social media app Telegram in has announced it would allow people to sell their handles. What do X’s rules say? X does not currently allow its usernames to be bought or sold. X’s username registration policy states: “Unfortunately, we cannot release inactive usernames at this time.”

X’s “inactive account policy” also tells users to log in every 30 days to avoid being considered inactive.

However, it says that X is not currently releasing inactive usernames. X also warns its customers against “username squatting”. [caption id=“attachment_12940082” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Elon Musk, who purchased X, formerly known as Twitter, for just over a year ago for $44 billion, has seen his investment’s value shrink to $19 billion.[/caption] It states: “Username squatting is prohibited by the X Rules… We will not release squatted usernames except in cases of trademark infringement… Attempts to sell, buy, or solicit other forms of payment in exchange for usernames are also violations and may result in permanent account suspension." Musk has often spoken about his dream for X to become an ‘everything app’ – along the lines of Weibo in China. Musk in a recent meeting said a person’s X posts can be “the biggest indicator” on whether they would be someone you’d want to hire. “I think the same is true also on the romantic front. Finding someone on the platform. Obviously, I found someone and friends of mine have found people on the platform. And you can tell if you’re a good match based on what they write,” he said. “So, X Dating around the corner then?,” asked CEO Linda Yaccarino. “Yeah. There’s already some stuff happening to some degree. But I think we might be able to improve the dating situation. Part of it is how do you discover interesting people? Discovery is tough," Musk replied. X’s struggles continue Twitter was struggling financially when Musk purchased it for $44 billion in a deal that closed on 27 October, 2022.

Today, the situation appears even more precarious.

Musk took the company private, so its books are no longer public — but in July, the Tesla CEO said the company had lost about half of its advertising revenue and continues to face a large debt load. “We’re still negative cash flow,” he posted on the site on 14 July, due to about a “50 per cent drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load.” “Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” Musk said. In May, Musk hired Linda Yaccarino, a former NBC executive with deep ties to the advertising industry in an attempt to lure back top brands, but the effort has been slow to pay off. While some advertisers have returned to X, they are not spending as much as they did in the past — despite a rebound in the online advertising market that boosted the most recent quarterly profits for Facebook parent company, Meta, and Google parent company, Alphabet. Insider Intelligence estimates that X will bring in $1.89 billion in advertising revenue this year, down 54 per cent from 2022. The last time its ad revenue was near this level was in 2015, when it came in at $1.99 billion. In 2022, it was $4.12 billion according to the research firm’s estimates. Outside research also shows that people are using X less. According to research firm Similarweb, global web traffic to Twitter.com was down 14 per cent, year-over-year, and traffic to the ads.twitter.com portal for advertisers was down 16.5 per cent. Performance on mobile was no better, down 17.8 per cent year-over-year based on combined monthly active users for Apple’s iOS and Android. “Musk hasn’t managed to make a single meaningful improvement to the platform and is no closer to his vision of an ‘everything app,’ than he was a year ago,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Jasmine Enberg. “Instead, X has driven away users, advertisers, and now it has lost its primary value proposition in the social media world: Being a central hub for news.” “Even though the cultural relevance of Twitter was already starting to decline,” before Musk took it over, “it’s as if the platform no longer exists. And it’s been a death by a thousand cuts,” Enberg added. “What’s really fascinating is that almost all of the wounds have been self-inflicted. Usually when a social platform, starts to lose its relevance there are at least some external factors at play, but that’s not the case here.” “Musk’s treatment of the platform as a technology company that he could remake in his vision rather than a social network fueled by people and ad dollars has been the single largest cause of the demise of Twitter,” Enberg added. With inputs from agencies