Kirk McElhearn:

I’ve always wondered why Twitter doesn’t have domain names. I don’t mean twitter.com; they have that. But domains for Twitter users. For example, take a company like Apple. They have a number of Twitter accounts, such as @AppStore, @AppleMusicHelp, and some Apple executives have accounts, such as @tim_cook and @cue.

But Twitter could make it easier to know who works for a company, or at least who’s using a company account. They could create a domain name. It could be something like @Apple/TimCook, or @TimCook/Apple. They could find a special character to separate the domain name from the user, so a company could buy a domain, and then control all the accounts with that domain.

I think Kirk is really on to something here. Implementation aside, there’s a discovery opportunity here for Twitter. Imagine being able to navigate to @Apple, then dive through the organization to find people to follow. There might be a path through @Apple/Exec, another through @Apple/Dev or @Apple/Dev/iOS. Those paths would lead to lists of Twitter accounts, making it possible to find a Twitter account when you don’t know a person’s name.

Know someone at Twitter? Pass Kirk’s idea along.