We’ve all been there. You’ve come up with the next brilliant idea for your new movie, book, band, or transmedia wonderland and go to get the Twitter name for your wondrous new creation — and it’s taken by some shmoe who has never tweeted, has no followers, and is following no one. Or maybe when you first got on Twitter, you thought it was better to go with some mysterious or cute (incomprehensibly long) user name, and now you want to just use your name — but again, somebody has parked your first and last name, your first and middle and last name, your first initial and last name and NOBODY is tweeting from any of them.

This is pretty bogus. And Twitter HQ, this must be at least a tiny bit of a drain on your servers. Wouldn’t it be better for everyone on Twitter if those names got shuffled back into the public domain automatically? Here’s what we propose:

ANY USER NAME WITH LESS THAN 10 TWEETS TOTAL AND ONE YEAR OF CONTINUOUS INACTIVITY WILL BE DELETED AND RETURNED TO THE TWITTER ETHER, READY FOR A NEW USER TO TAKE WHO ACTUALLY CARES ABOUT IT.

This is generous. This threatens no one, except the ones who decided to bail on Twitter anyway. All it does is renew the potential usability of words, names and phrases — some of which matter very much to the ones who are seeking them. So what do you say, Twitter? Are you up for a few minutes (hours?) of code-writing for the public good?