Rocketboom founder Andrew Michael Baron has announced that he’s auctioning off his Twitter account:

Baron is effectively wanting to monetize the attention that his Twitter account receives. Per the eBay auction:

The winner of this auction gets my account with all of my followers. The account is in my name now, but the winner of the auction can pick any other name that’s available on Twitter for the transfer. For example, you could have http://www.twitter.com/x where x=any name thats not already taken. You can change it yourself at anytime too, one of the cool features about Twitter settings.

So basically it’s like getting a new account with your own name, but having a pre-installed audience.

It looks like Baron is playing the part of the agent provocateur here – inciting others to disrupt the status quo of social networking.

It’s already generating a lot of discussion – and is sure to generate a lot of cheap publicity for Baron, Rocketboom and the buyer.

No matter what the Twitter account ends up going for, and whether or not Twitter allows the sale to go through, the more interesting question is not what Baron’s Twitter account is worth to someone else, but what the value of Baron’s credibility is, and how the sale will affect it.

Many of Baron’s Twitter followers may be happy to follow Baron to another social network or to follow his posts from his Rocketboom account. On the other hand, the sale is likely to piss off a lot of his followers, who may not just opt out of following him on Twitter, but opt out of following him completely.