This morning, I read a story on TechCrunch that got the wheels turning in my head. Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron decided to put his twitter account up for auction on ebay. From the auction:
I really love my Twitter account but I feel like I haven’t been using it the way I want to. Quite honestly, I feel sorry for all of my followers because they wind up with my tweets in their timelines and I haven’t been able to utilize the medium the way I want to. I also participate in another Twitter account over on Rocketboom so I’m thinking I’ll post more over there and start up a new account to do what I want to do next.
It would be silly to just delete this account I have here, especially if there is someone out there that had like interests and had something to say or wanted to get involved in some relevant conversations. In terms of monetary value, I have no expectations or needs at all so I decided not to put a minimum bid on this. Whatever will be, will be.
http://twitter.com/andrewbaronThe winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers. The account is in my name now, but the winner of the auction can pick any other name that’s available on Twitter for the transfer. For example, you could have http://www.twitter.com/x where x=any name thats not already taken. You can change it yourself at anytime too, one of the cool features about Twitter settings.
The auction photo:
Right now (1:00 PM EST), the current bid is $1,525.00. So, doing a little quick math, each twitter follower is worth about $1.09. Does that sound right?
In the TechCrunch post, Duncan Riley notes that if a sale takes place, Twitter will most likely delete the account. But this auction brings up some interesting questions to me:
- What is your network worth? You’ve spent a lot of time creating connections in the social networks you use, but how could you evaluate the worth of that network?
- Is your profile a commodity? Should you be able to sell your online identity to the highest bidder?
- Is your profile yours? Though the time spent on these networks building relationships is a cost to you, you do not actually own your profile or the connections you’ve created. They belong to twitter, facebook, etc. Given that, can you sell what is not really yours?
- Can this be compared to online video game accounts? Just looking quickly at ebay, I see 465 auctions for world of warcraft accounts. Sure, there’s a little bit of difference in that you have to pay to play online games, but this seems somewhat similar.
- How would followers feel? If you sell your twitter account, how will those that follow you feel? It seems like spam, or at the very least, identity spoofing.
In the post, Riley suggests that this may just be a publicity stunt, but the auction does bring up some interesting questions. How do you feel about this?
Focus: If you had to sell your twitter account, what is the lowest price you’d accept?
Focus Two: Using the $1.09 per follower amount, what is your twitter account currently worth? JFSAG.
