Selling Twitter accounts – what’s this b.s.?

April 15, 2008

twitter So Andrew Baron has his Twitter account for sale on ebay?  Can anyone tell me what the point of this exercise is?  Other than a money grab that is.

I mean, who among his followers would keep following the account when they discover it’s not actually him?  So that negates the value of his follower list – without that the account has no monetary value.

Heck, any one of us can go and build a “Fake Andrew Baron” Twitter account and follow the same people that the real one does.  Then go sell it on eBay for half the price the “real” account goes for.  In the end, it’s essentially the same account.

Just for fun, I should start creating “Fake <famous blogger here>” accounts, following the same people that the real person does and sell them on eBay.  The absurdity of it all just stuns me to the core.

Andrew, if you’re that hard up for cash, maybe you should take up a paper route… it builds character, at least it did in my case. :-P

What’s your take on this?  Seriously?

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  • MD
    so where does one actually sell their Twitter account....mine have been valued at over $9,000 dollars...thnx
  • I agree with you, but if he makes some money from selling, maybe the people who are in the wrong are the buyers, who basically have a twitter account which i'd expect will quickly lose followers over time and be worthless. That's the fickle nature of the internet where one community can be sold for millions, then suddenly everyone goes somewhere else and it becomes worthless.
  • wr3n, Jon - I've been wondering the same thing for the past day, and it finally made me a bit mad (sorry). To me, this just devalues Twitter itself.

    wr3n - your point on private followers is very important. One wonders if he did contact each of those followers and let them know - it is a privacy issue for sure. Those users opted-in for keeping their posts private, and need to be notified.

    Cheers,
    Rick
  • The whole "how to monetize twitter" has been bothering me for a while now. A lot of the "top people" (those with a lot of followers) use that to their advantage. Essentially like a mined database of emails but instead it's twitter accounts. Conversations like "I have 50,000 followers, if I mention your project it will be seen by 50,000 people. At .10/person that means I'm worth $5,000." That type of mindset bothers me. I don't want to thousands of followers to make money. I do want thousands of followers (vrillusions on twitter ;) ) but for the community aspect. Like if I send a message "I am looking at tv's which is better, Samsung or Sharp?" it would be great if I actually got responses. I ask open questions like that now and I get no responses simply because my audience isn't big enough.
  • JonMierow
    I'm not sure what is crazier: him selling it or that its going for $1500+? I'm also not sure exactly what the bidders think they're getting. I can't imagine that any of his 1700+ followers would continue after the sale. Unless your name also happens to be Andrew Baron, why bid? What is the reasoning for him to sell it?
    Was it an experiment to see if it would actually work? Did he just simply want to try and be the first person to sell a Twitter account? Was it a PR stunt to drum up some buzz about his name?
  • It's bizarre. Yet there are lame marketers out there who'd probably buy it.

    I would hope if there's anyone he follows who's accounts are privatized that he lets them know some stranger will soon be able to read their updates.
  • Seth Godin has 3392 followers and follows 0 because it's not him. Seth Godin doesn't use Twitter. It looks like in some cases it has hurt Seth Godin's reputation so perhaps the same will happen to Andrew Baron's..um..does he have a good reputation?
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