By
Svetlana Soroka
April 18th, 2024
Elon Musk assured the community that a lot of usernames would become available after the purging.
According to Elon Musk, his newly-possessed social media app, Twitter will be mopping up some accounts from its database. The purging of inactive accounts by Twitter will open up a handful of desired usernames for interested users. For a while now, Twitter has promised to add more usernames to its platform. However, the social media app has failed to carry out any meaningful effort to reinstate those usernames. Twitter earlier implemented a new policy suggesting that Twitter users should log in once every 30 days to keep their accounts from being permanently removed.
Elon Musk Wants to Purge Inactive Twitter Accounts
Elon Musk explained that the purging would affect Twitter accounts with no activity for several years as well as accounts with a declining number of follower counts. He said many Twitter account owners gathered many users in the early days of the social network without continuing with the registered account.
While replying to a Twitter user, he assured the community that a lot of usernames would become available after the purging. Nevertheless, the billionaire failed to highlight how these usernames would be acquired. Users hope the usernames will be available through the usual method of creating an account with a particular name.
A few months ago, Twitter sought to generate additional revenue by selling desired usernames through online auctions. Since the announcement was made, no one knows whether the intention is valid. In November 2022, Twitter created a revenue channel by introducing a revamped Twitter Blue subscription that costs $7.99 monthly. Last December, Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter would release the namespace for 1.5 billion accounts, adding that inactive accounts be deleted during the process. It is obvious that Musk is interested in clearing the decks for more usernames to emerge.
Twitter Loses Active Account Users to Other Social Blogging Platforms
The emergence of Elon Musk as the CEO of Twitter has increased competition from alternative social media platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, T2, nostr, and Post, among others. Although none of these applications has out-positioned Twitter, they have managed to gain the attention of several Twitter users. Mastodon, an open-source platform, currently boasts 1.2 million monthly active users across its servers. Many other companies like Substack, Flipboard, and Artifacts have launched platforms that may compete indirectly with Twitter. The release of fresh usernames might attract users back to Musk’s social messaging application.
Musk’s intention might trigger massive sign-up on Twitter and strengthen the platform’s ability to generate funds. Considering the loquacious tweets by Elon Musk, the purging of Twitter accounts might not occur yet. Since he tweeted, no official Twitter account has commented or shared any further updates about the topic. Some Twitter users suggest that accounts belonging to deceased users should be memorialized.