On the Dynamics of Username Changing Behavior on Twitter

Abstract

People extensively use username to lookup users, their profiles and tweets that mention them via Twitter search engine. Often, the searched username is outdated due to a recent username change and no longer refers to the user of interest. Search by the user's old username results in a failed attempt to reach the user's profile, thereby making others falsely believe that the user account has been deactivated. Such search can also redirect to a different user who later picks the old username, thereby reaching to a different person altogether. Past studies show that a substantial section of Twitter users change their username over time. We also observe similar trends when tracked 8.7 million users on Twitter for a duration of two months. To this point, little is known about how and why do these users undergo changes to their username, given the consequences of unreachability. To answer this, we analyze username changing behavior of carefully selected users on Twitter and find that users change username frequently within short time intervals (a day) and choose new username un-related to the old one. Few favor a username by repeatedly choosing it multiple times. We explore few of the many reasons that may have caused username changes. We believe that studying username changing behavior can help correctly find the user of interest in addition to learning username creation strategies and uncovering plausible malicious intentions for the username change.