Twitter squatting

There are no ownership rights in a twitter name. I had some company names and they were reverted over to the companies by twitter itself.

When tipjoy launched, Mark Mayhew ( http://markmayhew.com/ ) claimed http://twitter.com/tipjoy for us, and gave me the keys. It was really nice.

If you're using twitter to engage people and not just push content then your name shouldnt matter much as it will show up in your @replies...

If, like most corporations, you still see twitter as a push tool then yeah you're screwed because people wont be able to type your brand name and find you.

Twitter seems to be pretty good about turning over trademarks though

And pchristensen is taken. Thanks for giving me the top too late, networkworld.com.

I did that. @WordPress was originally mine but I gave over the keys when I met up with Matt at some event.

Flat centralized namespaces are bad; creating new ones is worse.