

CNN Acquires CNNBrk Twitter Account - transburgh
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/confirmed-cnn-acquires-cnnbrk-twitter-account/

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wallflower
Congratulations to him - I'm pretty sure 99% of his followers just auto-
followed and had no idea it was not officially CNN. James Cox, the UK
developer, in effect, created a wildly popular public announcement service by
being the first and obscuring his officialness.

Brief history of <http://twitter.com/cnnbrk>

"With the advent of Twitter, especially when it still delivered to my cell
phone (I’m in the UK), it seemed like the easiest way to solve that problem,
and so @cnnbrk was born."

January 1, 2007

"everyone - added CNN Breaking News to twitter. ev - great API! -- just do
_add cnnbrk_ and you'll get the alerts as they are sent out" -@imajes

<http://twitter.com/imajes/status/1963133>

August 1, 2008

"I do indeed wield the power of their brand: if I posted right now that Bush
is due to be impeached, or that Diet Coke really still contained cocaine - I
think the repercussions would be unpleasant."

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/aug/01/thecnnbreaki...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2008/aug/01/thecnnbreakingnewstwitter)

January 6, 2009

"You’ve mentioned that CNN has been in contact with you. Describe the nature
of this contact. Have they given you their blessing?

We’ve had a few conversations. Blessing is a difficult word in mainstream
media, but certainly the guys over at CNN have done a lot to protect and help
me."

[http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/the-twitter-cnn-breaking-
news-...](http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/the-twitter-cnn-breaking-news-bot-a-
lesson-in-good-trademark-infringement/)

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andr
Great! That would just cause a flood of bulk Twitter name registrations.

~~~
johnrob
Twitter accounts are not domain names. Right now, the hype is all about large
follower accounts and how you get them by following followers of existing
popular users. However, a follower is not worth as much as a website visitor,
because they are passive. I know first hand that notification based content
has very low response rates when compared to active content (search being the
best example of active).

So... the power of a great domain name is that people who type it into the
browser are active. For example, if you have a good typo-squatted domain, you
can get active visitors who, although mistyped the name of the desired
website, are nonetheless interested in your content and are (relatively
speaking of course) very likely to click on your ads.

~~~
andr
You are right in theory. In practice there are already tons of Twitter
usernames squatted, and Twitter is not doing anything to manage those. The
monetization of user names would only make the practice more popular.

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tsally
Awesome, acquired instead of sued. Personally I would have expected the later;
acquiring the name seems like a rather progressive move.

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vaksel
is this the first twitter account to be acquired?

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tlrobinson
So, is that why it hasn't been updated for 3 days?

~~~
mahmud
You have never been acquired have you? Intense talks followed by an
underwhelming exchange of goods for money, and you turn around to see your
baby relegated to irrelevance by the buyer, passed around between departments
and neglected by everyone. You almost want to stick your neck back in and tell
them what time she likes to nap, but the door is quickly shut and you're left
to ponder what to do with your life :-(

~~~
tlrobinson
Well, I assumed it was automated. Perhaps I assumed wrong.

