Here’s more obscure but potentially useful news – last week, Twitter Chief Elon Musk announced that Twitter would also soon be culling dormant accounts, which would also make many @handles free for users once more. On one hand, that’s great news for those who have long been looking to change their Twitter handles but are unable to do so because of availability; on the other, you have Elon Musk, who seemingly has a thing for culling, be it staff or, in this case, abandoned user accounts.

Eye on The Prize

On the topic of viewing handle availability, if there’s a handle, or several, that you’ve been eyeing, you can now track their status through a new app called handle.horse, which tracks Twitter account status. If there’s anything that you should have learned from TikTok, besides how to create addicting and trendy short clips, it’s how to create witty and attention-grabbing handles. More often than not, if a user has a unique-sounding handle, then their content is equally interesting.

handle.horse, created by Marc Kohlbrugge, is able to track your chosen or preferred Twitter @handle/s and monitor their status. When a handle on your list becomes available, provided it wasn’t previously. It’ll then send you an email to let you know that it’s up for grabs. So, ‘@cheeseandsteaks’ could soon be yours, which could help set up your Twitter brand presence.

Of course, we don’t know exactly how this coming @handle review is going to be conducted, nor when. Either way, it sounds like it could be a good way to stay on top of the changes, and ensure that you’re best placed to grab the Twitter handle that you’ve always wanted, whether personally or for your business. 

While it could be that both networks are already designed for a similar purpose and will simply grab every freed-up handle as they plop back into the system, but this is still worth a shot either way, helping you stay on top of changes as they happen, especially if you prefer to do things manually. 

The Wrap

Besides the niche use cases where handles are among the critical elements to success (i.e., influencer marketing, brand launch, etc.), they’re not really a significant part of what would make your brand successful; you can have a bad-sounding name for all anybody cares and still perform superbly. For the most part, what we can take from this is that long-time users, those that created their Twitter accounts back in high school under some pretty cringe name, now have the chance to rectify their past decision, which might improve their resonance with their audience.

Sources 

https://bit.ly/3YjRRsD