He could have use "the_real_timberneslee".

Nevertheless I do no see why the fuss. Yes, it is the inventor of the WWW but people is seeing this like "the blessing" of Bernes-Lee to the now-omnipower twitter. I think is not, it is just another user that has been catch for the wave.

One problem with that is long names kill @replies.

That's a problem with Twitter. Why do they force you to markup metadata within your data?

Yes, you right. Never thought about it