Elon Musk has taken over the @x Twitter account without paying its owner as part of the social network’s ongoing rebrand.
Gene X Hwang, a photographer in San Francisco, was behind the social network’s “@x” handle until Tuesday night when it was changed to the official account for X, Mr Musk’s new name for Twitter.
Mr Hwang had said he had been willing to entertain a sale of the @x account, which was registered in 2007, but that he simply received an email on Tuesday saying that it was being taken over by the company.
He told The Telegraph: “They just took it essentially – kinda what I thought might happen.”
Mr Hwang said he had been offered some X merchandise and a meeting with the company’s management, but was not offered any financial incentive.
He said in an email: “They did send an email saying it is the property of ‘x’ essentially.”
Twitter users have no legal rights over their usernames but the company’s terms of service says it will only remove people’s accounts in cases of trademark infringement.
It is unclear what trademarks Mr Musk’s X owns, although he does own the x.com domain name, which now directs to twitter.com.
The company has moved Mr Hwang’s account to a new handle.
Mr Hwang, tweeting from his new handle “@x12345678998765” on Wednesday morning, wrote: “All’s well that ends well.”
Before it was transferred, Mr Hwang said he would be willing to sell it at the right price.
He said: “I would sell if approached I think. Guess it depends on the offer.”
Single letter Twitter accounts – mostly created in the site’s early months before most people had heard of the social network – are seen as the service’s most valuable.
In the past, single letter accounts are believed to have changed hands for tens of thousands of dollars. One user, @n, has said they were offered $50,000 (£39,000) for their account.
“Bro gonna be a millionaire,” one Twitter user had posted about @x earlier this week, after Mr Musk changed Twitter’s logo and branding to X.
While it was run by Mr Hwang, the @x account had close to 30,000 followers and was set to private, meaning users could not see its tweets or follow the account without permission.
Many single letter accounts are suspended, possibly due to multiple attempts to hijack them.
Despite Twitter’s corporate rebrand, the company’s official account still has the handle @Twitter.
Mr Musk is seeking to make X into a “super app” that features not only Twitter’s existing social networking and messaging features, but also payments and banking as well as video.
His commitment to changing the company’s logo has included seeking to remove the Twitter sign from the company’s San Francisco headquarters, although his efforts were thwarted by police on Monday.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiamh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRlbGVncmFwaC5jby51ay9idXNpbmVzcy8yMDIzLzA3LzI2L3gtdHdpdHRlci1oYW5kbGUtYWNjb3VudC1vd25lci1ub3QtcGFpZC1lbG9uLW11c2stcmVicmFuZC_SAQA?oc=5
2023-07-26 09:28:00Z
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