With only a limited number of Twitter names available and many of the good ones already taken, it was perhaps inevitable that a market would spring up for Twitter username sales.
That was the thought that occurred to Craig Agranoff, one of the founders of the crowdsourcing site VOIS.com: today he's launching an aftermarket for Twitter names at Tweexchange.com. (Incidentally, Agranoff claims to have hired a developer for the project through the VOIS service itself for under $1000.)
It's an inevitable idea, and one that raises the question, "what am I buying?", since the Twitter names are still owned by Twitter. But you might also wonder if the brands with the biggest wallets would make use of such a service: if you're Walmart and your Twitter name is taken, you go direct to Twitter or the user who took it.
It's more likely, then, that Tweexchange will become a market for individual's names and generic terms. To do so, however, it'll need to get enough attention to reach a critical mass of high quality usernames.
We just hope that putting a price on Twitter usernames doesn't lead people to hoard thousands in the hope they might sell them later: alas, it seems this is exactly what might happen.