No idea. But I'd throw $100 their way to buy an account that's been dormant for six years.
why?
Imagine you have to write an algorithm to determine twitter spam. Would it include accountCreatedDate?
The algorithm would probably contain a dummy variable representing isYoungerThanXDays where X is the median number of time it takes to create a new account after it has been banned.
I doubt accounts that are Y days old vs. Z years old have different probabilities of being spammers.
Due to vanity reasons (they have "your" handle?) or for some other reason?
It correlates to a domain for a site I'm in the process of building. I haven't registered the brand's trademark yet, so I'm unable to claim the Twitter username based on that criteria. Seems like the only route they provide for this kind of thing.
I believe if you have the domain name you should be able to get the twitter handle. You can always just submit for a trademark, that's easy and cheap.
I've never registered a trademark before. Is there anything more to it than paying the fee and filing the paperwork for a business that's not yet operational?
Probably quite a few, but no matter what an inactive account is -- spam, a novelty account, or an actual inactive person -- if you have 3 times as many inactive accounts as active accounts, there is something awry.