Name-squatter fails to flog @roma Twitter handle to City of Rome Rome's authorities are totally uninterested in owning the Twitter account @Roma as their city's official voice in cyberspace, despite the council currently making do with the clunky @romacapitaleTW account instead. The current owner of the name, enterprising Spaniard Javier Castaño, is stuck with it for the time being, after …
To be fair, breakfast is the only thing fast in Italy (that, and the time between buying a Ducati and having to return to the garage): an espresso with a pasty, standing up at a bar, between home and work.
Seems more a lack of linguistic skill in the seller, to me. If an italian says 'Roma', there's a better than 50-50 chance he means AS Roma. The city in a political sense is both the capital community (with clear tourism-advertising interests) and the political capital; just like "Brussels" more often means "The EU council" than "the local government".
So why switch from a clear name to an ambiguous one, except if you'd already have happened to build up a large following? The length of the name doesn't matter, there's nobody that's typing it out.
The city of Rome spent a lot of cash to rebadge everything "Roma capitale" when the governemnt approved the bill with same name. It was intended to give the city some benefits to offset some perceived disadvantages of being the capital - but they thought it was sort of both a promotion and a name change, you know, if you say Rome without "capital" people may think you are speaking about Rome in Georgia or Minnesota... and if you write "capital" everywhere you feel more important. Probably they think DC after Washington means "De Capital", more or less how someone in Rome would pronounce it.... and wonder why London, Paris, etc. doesn't need to state they're the capitals...
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
