From the Guardian (who else?):
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”.
Meléndez said he set up the @Israel account when he stopped using another Twitter name to escape the attention of an ex-girlfriend.
He barely used the account, which was soon flooded with messages criticising the policies of the Israeli government.
He sold Israel his password, allowing them to close his account down and immediately reopen it, moving the Israeli foreign ministry’s @israelMFA account to @israel on 26 August.
“They got on the phone, I gave them the password, they saw that it worked and they gave me a cheque at the consulate,” he said from his home in Miami.
