# Anyone know why Twitter doesn’t recycle usernames?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-why-twitter-doesn-t-recycle-usernames/967780>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 11, 2022, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-why-twitter-doesn-t-recycle-usernames/967780 "2022-07-11T18:29:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\
**Post date:** [July 12, 2022, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/anyone-know-why-twitter-doesn-t-recycle-usernames/967780/21 "2022-07-12T13:37:09Z")

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> [@Bootb](#):
>
> The phone companies have recycled phone numbers for decades. What’s so special about usernames that they should be exempt from recycling?

I can’t look up a conversation you had 5 years ago. I can look up a 5 year old tweet from someone who hasn’t logged in since. It wouldn’t be impossible to deal with that in a relatively rational way, but it would require twitter to spend time and money formulating a policy, and the gain would be very small.

Phone numbers on the other hand are a limited resource and before cell phones made it technologically desirable and feasible to port them between providers recycling them made a lot of sense. Though if we get low on them again I expect the solution will be to replace them with an alphanumeric identifier.

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