Elon Musk’s latest madness with X (Twitter): He wants you to pay for your username, and not a little

Elon Musk pulled out a new trump card from his sleeve. X (Twitter) has been in the shadows for some time, with no relevant news and without the tycoon paying much attention to his most ambitious purchase yet. Today the advertising drought ends: Pens This is a new feature of the social network, which is not only interesting to the majority, but also represents a way to generate income for those users who take the Musk social network very seriously.

What are handles? This is a new service launched by X (Twitter) so you can Buy the username you want. Yes: buy. The social network is taking all those abandoned or closed accounts over the years and making their usernames available.

Generic names are essentially free, albeit with a huge but. X (Twitter) launched Handles only for paying users the most expensive service on the social network: Premium+, which costs a fortune. 36.87 euros per month in Spain. If you pay for this plan, you will have access to the new username storage.

Here’s how Handles, the X (Twitter) username store, works

There are two types of usernames in Handles: free and paid. If you have X Premium+, you can access both. The free ones are those that are called simple: people’s namesalphanumeric combinations or short phrases. If it’s available, you can purchase it without paying and make it your new profile name.

On the other hand, Handles also offers a series extended usernames. These are rare, strange, very short, or related to frequently searched queries. They can cost from 2500 and 1 million dollars. It all depends on the demand for the symbol you want to make yours on X (Twitter).

But the matter doesn’t end there. If you purchase one of these names, free or paid, you must continue to pay for the Premium+ plan to keep it.. If you unsubscribe, you will lose the right to use that name and it will revert to the list of available ones. That is, you cannot pay for a month, get the name you have long wanted, and cancel. Elon Musk forces you to keep paying.

What’s wrong with your old name? X (Twitter) has taken this into account: if you buy a new one on the site, the previous one is reserved for you in case you want to use it again in the future or if you stop paying for a Premium+ subscription. In addition, the service also includes redirection from old name to new oneso that the links remain valid and you can be found by your previous nickname.

If this service seems familiar to you, it’s because it was already available for business accounts and related profiles: now X (Twitter) is making it available to everyone. regular users who, of course, want to pay for the associated losses.