[reaperducer]

Or drop the alpha chars altogether and just go numeric. It worked for CompuServe. Everyone's ID was an octal number. 72167,4531 for example.

That way there is no overlap, and nobody is slighted when they find out that their name is taken.

[thiagomgd]

Compuwhat? sorry, never heard about it. (which might or not be related to this decision)

ICQ uses a number, but yeah, how many people still use it?

[emiliovesprini]

Yeah, I like that the arbitrary nature of non-meaningful names frees us from all these drawbacks and compromises. A simple system. But outside of strictly pseudonymous places like 4chan it erodes the concept of a unique username altogether. If you're always gonna type a display name and choose from a dropdown, why even display the numbers?

Plus, now that the identifier carries no meaning, you can't type "@realdonaldtrump ..." and expect people to know who it refers to, you'd have to type "@aae0450, Donald Trump ...".