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Twitter Stopped Letting New Users Pick Their Usernames During Sign-Up Years Ago

• tinus_hn 6y ago
  Makes sense not to reserve usernames for people who are just using the account to follow and don’t tweet themselves. This is a problem Twitch runs into, there are many more people watching than streaming but everyone has an account name and can stream so a lot of names are taken.
• shannifin 6y ago
  Reduces sign-up friction I guess. Signing up for something and finding your default usernames are already taken is always annoying.
  • Can_Not 6y ago
    Especially if that person registered your handle 3 weeks before you and didn't login again for the next 15 years.
• damieng 6y ago
  I was working at Xbox when we made the same change there. Web analytics were showing a massive drop-off in signup as users struggled to think of a good gamertag that wasn't already taken. At the time you had to pay to change your gamertag so when we introduced this you got a free change after it had generated one instead.