If Twitter bans the sale of usernames then they take away any incentive to squat.  But is the commitment credible?

While Twitter tries to work out how to make money, a Spaniard has sold his username on the site for a six-figure sum.

In 2007 Israel Meléndez set up a Twitter account under his first name. This year he was approached by the state of Israel, which wanted to buy @Israel from him for a quantity of dollars that, he told Spain’s Público newspaper, included “five zeroes”.

The sale went through despite Twitter’s stated policy of preventing username squatting and Meléndez, who runs adult websites for a living, said Twitter itself had advised the Israeli government on how this could be done.

“All the business of getting in contact with Twitter was done by them [Israel],” Meléndez said. “I never saw any emails [between them] and Twitter never contacted me, but if the @Israel account is open and working I imagine it means that Twitter had no problem with the transaction.”