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OK, suppose I want to be kingofthelab at Twitter...

If you couldn't "tweet" from a mobile, we'd all miss Steven Fry's minute by minute tour guide to the world. But who is STeven Fry? "Selling free user names is against the Twitter Rules. Which include: "If someone has tried to sell you a Twitter user name, please let us know."

It's Twitter's rule against what it calls Name Squatting. And anybody can see what they are trying to stop: they don't want some chancer going through the phone book registered TomSmith, SandySmith, QuentinSmith, PosySmith, OliverSmith, NialSmith, MarySmith, all the way to AlanSmith, and then putting all these names up for auction at $20 a time.

But suppose you start a little business called "Mobile Tweet" and register www.mobiletweet.co.uk and run it for a year. Naturally, you might want to set up my Twitter account as MobileTweet - and as soon as you try, it says "taken". It turns out the guy who has that ID doesn't run a business. I approach him and suggest a swap.

He suggests money changes hands. And why not?

Oh, you can Follow me as gkewney, if you like... and I will set up mobiletweet.co.uk too! But I can't get mobiletweet as a twitter; it's taken