"Vast number" of handles had been taken by "bots and trolls," Mr Musk had tweeted.
Elon Musk's X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, is selling user accounts that are no longer in use for the price of $50,000 and higher. According to Forbes, a team within the company, known as the @Handle Team, has started to work on a handle marketplace to sell the account names left unused by people who originally registered them. Notably, this comes months after Mr Musk unveiled a plan to implement such a program in the near future.
Now, Forbes has uncovered emails indicating that the @Handle Team is actively working to sell disused user handles. The outlet reported that X has already sent solicitations to potential buyers, requesting a fixed fee of $50,000 to initiate the account purchase. These emails were sent by active X employees, who mentioned that the company had made recent updates to its @Handle guidelines, procedures and fees.
Notably, after his purchase of the micro-blogging site, Mr Musk had hinted towards his plans to sell the old usernames. "Vast number" of handles had been taken by "bots and trolls", he tweeted days after his Twitter acquisition. In January this year, several reports then suggested that the billionaire was planning to free up as many as 1.5 billion usernames. In May, X had already begun the process of removing inactive accounts from its platform.
Forbes reported that on Friday evening, X's username registration policy still stated that "unfortunately, we cannot release inactive usernames at this time". Its "inactive account policy," on the other hand, warned users to log in every 30 days to avoid being considered inactive. But it also said X was not currently releasing inactive usernames.
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Meanwhile, Elon Musk has indicated his desire to transform X into an "everything app". In a post, the billionaire said that the rebranded platform would be expanded to offer "comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world". In a recent internal meeting, Mr Musk also dropped a hint at an unlikely new feature for the micro-blogging site - dating.
Musk said a person's X posts can be "the biggest indicator" of whether they are 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 added.