twitter fail blog

A little over a year ago, we had a spirited conversation with someone, and her husband, and their daughter, and some of their friends, for reporting squatters on twitter. Mostly because we reported all the twitter usernames they were hanging onto as part of their own little “sell stuff we get for free” twitter scheme. Mother and daughter were selling amateurish logos based on twitter usernames they created and held onto with their grubby little get-rich-quick hands for the purpose of “giving” them to the people who bought their logos. They called it a “branding package.” They also had a bunch of gmail accounts with the same usernames they were going to throw in for “free”. Of course, since it’s against twitter’s terms of service, and google’s as well, to sell usernames/accounts, by giving them away, they were perfectly within the rules. Or maybe not, since their shop has apparently closed down and blown away in the harsh winds of reality.

In our original post, we ranted loud and long about twitter’s lackadaisical attitude about rampant TOS violations, and then stormed right into a tirade about porn on twitter. The porn is still here, because porn shows up every time there is a new, successful online network and dirties up the playground. Kind of like how pigs create mud piles to roll in. We’re starting to digress, and this post is about squatters, so we’ll reel ourselves back in.

When we started this blog, we wanted to use the domain twitterfail.com. But a nasty squatter had his blubber all over it, waiting for us to cave and fork over big bucks so he could multiply his investment a thousand times over, and retire on the sweat of our brow. So, we became one of the hyphenators and moved on.

Okay, not completely. First, we shelled out $18.95 to backorder the domain, because you never know.

We waited. And the slimeball renewed the domain.

So we waited some more. And this year, the domain went up for auction. Our $18.95 got us an opening bid of $10. Certain no one else could be interested, we sat back, all smug and happy.

And then somebody started bidding against us.

We finally bid an amount that we thought was way bigger than anyone else could possibly want to throw away on a domain they’d never use. And went to a meeting. And were promptly overbid. We got home, and got news that we lost the auction, creepazoid won, and the domain was now available as a Premium domain. For way more money than we could ever justify spending on a domain for a blog we write just for fun. *Sigh*

So we took it like a grown-up, licked our wounds and quietly went our way.

Ha! Almost had you there.

Tonight, a miracle happened. We got an email just a few minutes ago from GoDaddy:

Congratulations! The following domain name(s) that you backordered was successfully captured:

TWITTERFAIL.COM

So now you can find us on both domains, twitterfail.com and twitter-fail.com. We’re bi-domainsional.

Sometimes good things do happen to nice people who wait. And to us, too.