Israel buys @Israel twitter name from Israel Melendez of Miami

[Liberal_in_LA]

Israel Buys @Israel From an Israel With Help from Twitter

By Eliot Van Buskirk September 14, 2010

Israel, the country, now owns @Israel, the Twitter handle, following a reported five-figure deal with one Israel Meléndez of Miami, Florida, conducted in cooperation with Twitter.

The Twitter short messaging network does not permit what might be termed “handle squatting,” by users who register a bunch of underused Twitter names in the hopes of selling them later to people who actually want to use them.

However, Meléndez reportedly registered his own @Israel name in 2007, so he can hardly be called a “squatter.” And according to the Spanish-language publication Publico, which first reported this story about two weeks ago, he also operates a pornographic site called greenshines.com. He apparently used the @israel account as his personal account until, he recalled, it received too much abuse directed at Israel, the country.

Read More http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/israel-twitter/#ixzz0zXCrufvc