How I lost my Twitter name. A cautionary tale…

Update – I’m back! Twitter support reinstated my original twitter username on 17/July/2009!

The short version

1. I registered as frankiep
2. I decided I would like to capitalise to FrankieP
3. Twitter said “That’s You!” and then “Username already in use”
4. Decided to try changing username to something different and then back to FrankieP
5. Twitter wouldn’t let me change back to FrankieP or frankiep saying username was already in use
6. frankiep and FrankieP still resolved to my account for 48 hours
7. After 48 hours they resolved to another users account – which was last updated 16 days prior to my username change
8. I have lost my username due to a glitch and I would really like it back.
9. I would love frankiep back, would ideally want FrankieP, and in an ideal world both would resolve to my profile!

The long version

Registered frankiep & couldn’t change to capitalised version

I registered with Twitter as frankiep. I was happy enough, but one day I decided that I would be happier if I had FrankieP – same username but with capitalisation. So I did some research and found conflicting reports on the web about whether capitalisation would be a different username, or the same one.

The only thing to do was to try and change my name – so I went into the settings and tried to change from frankiep to FrankieP. No luck – twitter told me the username was already in use.

I checked, and both http://twitter.com/frankiep and http://twitter.com/FrankieP resolved to my account.

Could change to capitalised version FrankieP temporarily

A couple of days later, Twitter implemented some cool changes in their web interface, and I wondered if by any chance they had fixed the problem which was preventing me from capitalising my username. So I went into the settings to try again – this time when I edited my username to FrankieP the interface when checking availability told me “That’s You!”.

When I then tried to save the change, Twitter told me that it couldn’t save because the username was already in use, but my account would show as FrankieP until I logged out. When I logged in again – using FrankieP – it would revert to frankiep.

For a while I changed the settings every time I logged in, in the hopes that one day the issue would be resolved and the change would stick.

I sent an @ reply to Twitter a couple of times asking about it, but no reply.

Thought changing my username to something different and back again might help

Someone saw my question to Twitter and suggested changing my name to something else and then back to FrankieP. That kind of made sense because if Twitter was being confused by the fact that it thought it was me anyway, maybe by changing and then reverting back to the capitalised version it would be a clearer change.

I knew I was taking a risk, but I felt if I acted fast enough my desired username would only be available for a moment or two.

So I changed my username to TheFrankieP, and then went to change it again to FrankieP – but Twitter said that FrankieP was already in use, and so was frankiep.

I checked and frankiep and FrankieP both resolved to my account – which was now officially TheFrankieP.

While I had username frankiep, I think another user was able to register capitalised version FrankieP

At this point I was worried, but I figured that there might be some form of caching or holding pool for recently changed usernames. So I waited, and tried to change my username every so often – always with the same results.

Until about 48 hours later when not only could I not get my username back, but frankiep and FrankieP started resolving to another user. I couldn’t believe it – I assumed at first that Twitter had released the name and someone had just got in before me, but then I noticed the guy had one update – 16 days ago when I still held the username.

My best guess is that someone else was somehow able to register as FrankieP while I was frankiep, but that he found he couldn’t use Twitter because Twitter allowed him to register but then wouldn’t recognise him as I had the other version of the name.

Now unable to get my username back

In the meantime, I’m stuck with a new username I don’t want and can’t get my old username back, worse, someone else has it, due to what would appear to be a weird glitch in the system.

I have submitted a support ticket, but I’m not holding my breath – reports on turnaround times are not good.

If anyone can help, I’d greatly appreciate it.

I’ll leave you with the advice not to mess with your username on Twitter at all, for the time being!

This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.