The bird logo is not the only casualty in Elon Musk's haphazard Twitter rebrand. The company has seized the @X Twitter account from the person who has controlled it since 2007.
As Mashable reports, a San Francisco man named Gene X. Hwang registered the handle 16 years ago. But on Tuesday—after several news outlets interviewed Hwang about his unique account—Twitter took over @X, with little notice or compensation. "[I] got an email basically saying they are taking it," Hwang told Mashable, adding: “Oh well—guess that's how it goes."
Elon Musk’s company has since transferred the 65.9 million followers of @Twitter over to the @X handle. The @Twitter account doesn't redirect; it's just private now, with no followers.
As for Hwang, he was booted to a different, and rather inconvenient, Twitter handle: @x12345678998765. In response, he tweeted from the new account: “Alls well that ends well.”
In his interview with Mashable, Hwang adds that he received no financial compensation from Twitter, which appears to have forcefully taken over the @X handle. Twitter merely offered “some merch and to meet with management if I like,” he said.
On why he was given such a strange Twitter handle, Hwang also told PCMag: "That's the default one they went to when the took over the account but I can change it once I settle on something so it's just temporary."
Reaction to Twitter’s transformation into X has been mixed. Although the rebrand is all about Twitter expanding into messaging, finance, and video calls, some critics say Elon Musk is losing all the valuable brand recognition his company has built up.
The other problem is that numerous companies, including Meta, already own trademarks for X, which could expose Twitter to lawsuits. On top of all this, the letter x is often connected to porn, so the rebrand could make it harder for Twitter to attract mainstream advertisers.