February 15, 2009

Short Twitter Names

There are no official figures of the number of Twitter users. Estimations go up to 8 million. As the number of Twitter users increases daily, new Twitter users find out that it is not easy to find a Twitter name that is still available. I had a close look at the shortest Twitter names, these consisting of only 1 and 2 characters.

All 1 character long Twitter names are currently taken. 6 of these 37 Twitter names (A-Z, 0-9 and underscore) are private Twitter accounts, 4 of these Twitter names are without updates.

There are 1369 Twitter names of 2 characters long - all combinations of A-Z, 0-9 and underscore. The good news is that 76 of these combinations are still free. 205 of the 2 character long Twitter accounts are private, 41 are suspended due to strange activity. 296 of the 2 character long Twitter accounts are still without updates.

The oldest 2 character long Twitter account is twitter.com/ev. It is the Twitter account of Evan Williams, one of the founders of Twitter.com. Other famous 2 character long Twitter accounts are ie - IE (yes Internet Explorer), twitter.com/om - Om Malik and twitter.com/f1 - Formula 1. Some of the 2 character long Twitter account are cleary fake accounts, e.g. twitter.com/sf - San Francisco, but without friends and updates, twitter.com/fr - Francophonie, "voulez-vous coucher avec moi ?" and twitter.com/uk - no meaningful name or bio, but 195 followers.

A lot of the 1 or 2 character long Twitter names are taken but not really used. In total there are 1406 combinations. 1289 combinations or 92% taken. Only 473 of these Twitter accounts have a location, 384 of these locations are "real" locations.


The 1289 Twitter accounts have on average 49 friends (other Twitter accounts that are followed), with twitter.com/s the Twitter account with the most friends - 11722. 572 Twitter accounts have no friends at all.

The 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name are on average being followed by 186 other Twitter users, with twitter.com/ev having the most followers - 98712. 346 Twitter accounts do not have followers.

The 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name have on average 405 updates. The most productive Twitter account is twitter.com/zb, with as of this writing 45469 updates. 300 Twitter accounts are still waiting for their first update.

Of the 1289 Twitter accounts with a (very) short name 136 accounts stand out as blank accounts, accounts without friends, followers or updates.

If you are looking for a (very) short Twitter Name, you are either too late of you will have to hurry to get your Twitter account registered. Or you could consider to persuade the holder of one of the inactive accounts to hand over his Twitter account.

40 comments:

Rupert said...

Nice analysis.

I've made a website to help people find short Twitter names called Little Twit.

The number of two-letter names has been dropping quickly since your article was written. About the same time you wrote this post I found about 44 free names, rather than 76. I got this through the "check name is free" service rather than browsing to the user, and now the total is 17. Interestingly one came back a few days ago (z_), so it is not all one-way.

Bihar said...

This interesting, some people create names and try to sell it. There should be rules against this.

Anonymous said...

hmm am lucky

twitter.com/3

rose said...

not only nice, it's great analysis.

Alex Posicionamiento Web said...

The shorter the name the more chances of being searchable. That is one possible reason but they are not aware of the negative impact in the industry of the internet. Most of the time, people would do anything just to gain more traffic and attention. This article already noticed it so the strategy is effective. Even the stats noticed the difference.

This is a great article! Thanks!

Alex

Claudia - Inversiones Rentables said...

Thanks for the article, this is interesting about twitter

sandra - ley de atraccion said...

Very interesting information. I had no idea about short tweeter names. thanks for sharing.
Sandra.

sonia | Perfumes de imitacion said...

it`s great analysis

regards
sonia

tiendasleticia | lenceria said...

nice. thanks for all!!
best regards

Jeane - ropa de ciclismo said...

I do not use to walk around the SM.
I didn't know anything about the possibility of cutting the names.

Tanks for sharing!!

maquina de soldar said...

Very useful

Anonymous said...

Interesting. Very much interested with the available twitter names. How did you find out about these?

ana - diseño de paginas web said...

And short names on twitter disappeared long ago. The number of Twitter users is very large so as such names are available. This very interesting your analysis:)
Sorry my English is not very good:) I hope you understand the comment.

Ana Maria

loros said...

Fantastic article, I love the site thanks to her I learned a lot, Greetings from Spain!

clean mac said...

Interesting info. As developers of Twitter suggests - using short names is good, as message transmits faster ones with long name )

Patricia - Enfermedad de meniere said...

Evans should consider that it is more simple and short names will grow in quantity twitter and also in their chain length, because social networks have life for a while.

inversiones financieras said...

I think, the shorter the name the more chances of being searchable. That is one possible reason but they are not aware of the negative impact in the industry of the internet. Most of the time, people would do anything just to gain more traffic and attention. This article already noticed it so the strategy is effective. Even the stats noticed the difference.

This is a great article! Thanks!
regards from Italy

Mike - negocio en internet said...

i had not the faintest idea that the shorter was the name on twitter you could more easily be found, is very, very interesting all the stuff you're sharing to us, your analysis is quite deep.

twitter honestly not all that much, but what you're on facebook, I think I should start using this analysis twitter change my perspective.

Thanks great article!

Jesus | Descargar Ares said...

Fantastic post!! I love this site. Excellent work.

Jose | Dj Rajobos said...

Good post,fantastic site. Good work.

Trigliceridos Altos said...

Very interesting information. I had no idea about short tweeter names. thanks for sharing.
Sandra.

Easy Catalogo said...

Great analysis. Thank you very much Sandra. I will read others post.

Joshua Carpenter - vudu said...

I really short names work, but I know cases of colleagues who do not is the same as me. I would like someone enlighten me well because this happens.
Thank you!

Blanqueamiento Dental said...

Good analysis. Thank you very much Sandra. I will read others post also.

Persianas said...

Fantastic this site thanks and keep going.

Jhon - Apuestas deportivas online said...

is very good article, excellent

thanks

Anónimo - ultracavitacion bogota said...

twitter honestly not all that much, but what you're on facebook, I think I should start using this analysis twitter change my perspective.

Anónimo - ultracavitacion bogota said...

I had no idea about short tweeter names. thanks for sharing.
I didn't know anything about the possibility of cutting the names

Anonymous said...

I have & actively use @ur

christian | nutricion deportiva said...

i think is a great idea put shorten names but i dont know if this will be the best action.

dietas rapidas y efectivas said...

wow this is amazing!! thanks for sharing! :D

casas en venta en cuenca said...

That's cool!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
academias de ingles en madrid said...

Nice

academias de ingles en madrid said...

:)

Anonymous said...

A great article thank you! May someone help me get this @hbj username, its not active since 2007 which is really annoying.

fotos said...

This interesting, some people create names and try to sell it. There should be rules against this.

Unknown said...

My twitter name is the two-letter @fn

This, thanks to my techie friends who urged me (an Indian journalist) to take up to Twitter early on, in 2006 or maybe 2007. Unfortunately, some Frenchmen (and women) tend to think that I'm in someway associated with the racist political party with the same initials, so I sometimes get a deluge of discussions of which I can't understand a word! Poetic justice ... ?

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