Elon Musk is accused of taking over @X Twitter account from San Fran snapper Gene X Hwang who says ‘they just took it’ as part of the platform’s rebrand
- Gene X Hwang held the @x Twitter handle from 2007 until it was taken over by X
Elon Musk has been accused of taking over the @x Twitter account from a San Francisco photographer who says ‘they just took it’ as part of Musk’s rapid rebrand of the social media platform.
Gene X Hwang held the @x Twitter handle from 2007 until it was taken over on Tuesday by the official account of X – Musk’s new brand for Twitter.
Mr Hwang had previously said he would be willing to sell the @x account to Musk as the rebrand appeared to be on the horizon.
But instead, the photographer said he simply received an email on Tuesday telling him that the account handle had been taken by the company.
It came amid Musk’s rebrand of the company that saw the Twitter logo killed off on Monday, replacing the world-recognized blue bird with a white X, as the tycoon accelerates his efforts to transform the social media giant.
Gene X Hwang held the @x Twitter handle from 2007 until it was taken over on Tuesday by the official account of X – Musk’s new brand for Twitter
Elon Musk has been accused of taking over the @x Twitter account from a San Francisco photographer Gene X Hwang
READ MORE: Inside Elon Musk’s 25-year history and obsession with the letter X
‘They just took it essentially – kinda what I thought might happen,’ Mr Hwang told The Telegraph.
As Musk took to Twitter on Sunday night to announce ‘soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand,’ Mr Hwang retweeted the post with a cold sweat emoji.
He said despite not being offered money for the account handle, he was offered new X merchandise and a meeting with the rebranded social media company’s management.
Mr Hawng told the publication in an email: ‘ They did send an email saying it is the property of ‘x’ essentially.’
Users have no legal rights over their handles on the social media platform. However, within the terms of service that users are required to agree to before setting up their account, the company says it will only remove account handles in cases of trademark infringement.
Musk does own the x.com domain name, but it is unclear what trademarks he possesses.
After X acquired @x, Mr Hwang was ascribed a different handle: @x12345678998765.
Tweeting from the new @ for the first time, Mr Hwang wrote: ‘All’s well that ends well.’
Elon Musk has been accused of taking over the @x Twitter account from a San Francisco photographer. Musk is pictured at the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16
Twitter’s new logo is seen projected on the corporate headquarters building in downtown San Francisco Sunday night
Single letter Twitter accounts have previously sold for tens of thousands of dollars. The majority of the accounts with a one character handle were created in the company’s infancy when few knew of Twitter.
The user of @n said they were offered $50,000 (£39,000) for their account.
But many of the other single letter accounts are suspended. This would likely be due to the many attempts to hack them.
After buying Twitter, Musk had said that he wanted to create a super-app inspired by China’s WeChat, which would function as a social media platform and also offer messaging and payments.
‘You basically live on WeChat in China because it’s so usable and helpful to daily life, and I think if we can… get close to that at Twitter, it would be an immense success,’ he told a company town hall meeting in June last year.
The company’s chief executive Linda Yaccarino, who Musk hired last month, said Sunday that the social media platform was on the cusp of broadening its scope.
‘X is the future state of unlimited interactivity – centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking – creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities,’ she tweeted.
The company’s new logo was seen adorning its San Francisco headquarters on Sunday night
Musk changed his profile picture to the company’s new logo on Sunday night, which he described as ‘minimalist art deco,’ and changed his Twitter bio to ‘X.com’
Twitter’s logo change was greeted with criticism, as well as nostalgia for what had become a symbol for the social media age.
Martin Grasser, one of the original designers of the blue bird logo, wrote that it was intended to be ‘simple, balanced, and legible at very small sizes.’
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who signed off on the design in 2012, replied to Grasser with an emoji of a goat, meaning ‘greatest of all time’.
The new logo was projected onto the facade of the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Sunday night, hours before the company began removing the Twitter sign on the building.
US media reported that the San Francisco police paused the removal to investigate a possible unpermitted street closure, but determined that no crime was committed.
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