Kirk McElhearn:
I’ve always wondered why Twitter doesn’t have domain names. I don’t mean twitter.com; they have that. But domains for Twitter users. For example, take a company like Apple. They have a number of Twitter accounts, such as @AppStore, @AppleMusicHelp, and some Apple executives have accounts, such as @tim_cook and @cue.
But Twitter could make it easier to know who works for a company, or at least who’s using a company account. They could create a domain name. It could be something like @Apple/TimCook, or @TimCook/Apple. They could find a special character to separate the domain name from the user, so a company could buy a domain, and then control all the accounts with that domain.
I think Kirk is really on to something here. Implementation aside, there’s a discovery opportunity here for Twitter. Imagine being able to navigate to @Apple, then dive through the organization to find people to follow. There might be a path through @Apple/Exec, another through @Apple/Dev or @Apple/Dev/iOS. Those paths would lead to lists of Twitter accounts, making it possible to find a Twitter account when you don’t know a person’s name.
Know someone at Twitter? Pass Kirk’s idea along.
How about something like TimCook@Apple or Dev@Apple? Oh, wait…
This seems like an unnecessary complication to a system that has a problem with piling on cruft. Additionally do we like the idea of creating yet another namespace with squatters and large orgs taking over big swaths of generic terms to block out competition? I just don’t think discovery is that difficult on Twitter to warrant this particular Pandora’s Box.
I’d like a simple list of associated accounts under a user’s stats; Tweets, Likes, Following, Followers, Linked Accounts (or something like that).
Terrible idea.
How about apple.com/twitter and then then can list whoever they want.
sounds horrible to me. perhaps some kind of preloaded and verified group thing that isn’t part of the actual user name. something that anymore can search etc. maybe as part of the whole verified user thing. then say companies could create a list of all their execs that are on the service. movies/tv shows could make lists for each item with the actors etc that are on the service plus the title account. and so on
That would defeat the whole purpose of Twitter. When you follow someone on Twitter, you are following that individual, not a part of a company. When they leave that company, you still want to be following them. You don’t want their Twitter handle to become obsolete. The fact that Tim Cook is so strongly identified with Apple is the exception not the rule. Today, most people work at one particular company for 18 months tops.