harry works around people that pine for vanity usernames. vanity = big deal in those circles. who knows why. not bad in itself.
places like foursquare, people know people at twitter. if your outside the valley twitter won't even help you when the autosuspender mistakenly pops your account but valley/connected people call an investor or executive and get their vanity handle in hours. seen it happen twice.
it's all who you know and never forget it. when i dealt with twitter support as a normal the disparity between insider service and official was pretty amazing. they are the worst of the valley backscratchers.
bet they would have taken @n if the right person called. what would you do, sue?
Twitter never would have taken @n if the right person called.
Up until maybe 18-24 months ago if you knew the right folks you could generally get an inactive account released but even that is pretty much off the table at this point.
All industries have insiders. In some you can get a twitter handle, in others hard to get concert tickets, in others I bet it's early access to the latest in air ventilation equipment. It's not malicious. It's just personal relationships.
Or is it just vaguely notable?