Elon Musk took over @X handle without paying the man who owned it for 16 years: Report
Elon Musk took over @X handle without paying the man who owned it for 16 years: Report
According to reports, the @X handle is owned by a company known as Orange Photography.
The owner of the account said that he was not approached by Musk or X before the handle was taken over. (credit: Wealth concept)
Elon Musk has yet again dominated the news feeds. This time for rebranding Twitter with a new logo – X. Even as the tech world is coming to terms with the undoing of the brand name of the world’s most popular microblogging site, Musk has asserted the method behind his swift change. All of this aligns with his plans to build the all-encompassing ‘everything app’ in the future.
However, there seems to be a dark side to the rebranding. Musk’s X app has switched from @Twitter to @X and reportedly the billionaire technocrat has not paid the previous owner of the handle to acquire the one-letter handle.
According to reports, the single-letter handle was previously registered to an individual identified as Gene X Hwang who is the co-founder of a company known as Orange Photography. Hwang had registered the handle some 16 years ago, however, now the handle no longer belongs to him.
A report in the Independent stated that Hwang on Tuesday said that he was not approached by Musk nor X before the handle was taken over. And on Wednesday the account was taken by the rebranded Twitter.
On Wednesday, Hwang took to his new handle @x12345678998765 and tweeted “All’s well that ends well”. His tweet attracted over 113K likes and 14.5K retweets.
Meanwhile, another report in The Telegraph said that neither Musk nor his company paid any money to Hwang before taking over his handle. Incidentally, this is not the first time that Musk took over other Twitter accounts after he acquired the platform.
The rebranding was announced on Sunday night, and on Monday, the headquarters of Twitter saw the removal of the old signage and installation of the X logo.