Twitter Squatting?

Yes you heard me Twitter Squatting! We are all familiar with the, not so popular, act of CyberSquatting or Domain Squatting, where a user registers a celebrity or company name or trademark in the hopes to sell that name at an inflated price. That trend has now hit popular social media cites like Twittter (and presumably others)

PC World reports the latest trend is "Twitter Squatting". As evidence PC World notes that every single-letter TwitID is taken, some (very few it seems) are legitimate, but X, Y, and Z are place holders. They also checked out common words and companies. For instance Coke, Pepsi, Nike, and Chevrolet are all taken by place holders. It woulds seem they are more than likely looking to cash in by selling them to their respective companies.

Twitter user darrenkopp pointed out over at Slashdot that he already discovered evidence of Twitter squatting. Check out this Twitter account. The only update is:

Hiya. Please contact me if you'd like this Twitter account. glennbecktwitter@gmail.com

It would seem users wanting to protect their own brand, or name had better hurry and register them with as many social media sites as possible. Most companies grab all their domains associated with their names. Ex: I own several of the top-level domains for this site including .org, and .biz. Why not add to that and register all the social media names you can. It might save you some time and money down the road.