What Elon Musk’s X offered Gene X Hwang for prized @x Twitter handle he had since 2007
- Twitter rebranded to X this week, and is changing all its official accounts to match
- Owner of @x handle Gene X Hwang says the company abruptly took it from him
In its rebranding efforts, X – formerly known as Twitter – abruptly took over one of its user accounts with the handle @x on Tuesday night.
The original owner of the handle, Gene X Hwang, told Insider he received an email regarding the handle change and was given the much longer handle @x12345678998765. He’d owned the @x handle since 2007 and has since generated over 53,000 followers on the social media site.
Hwang, a photographer from San Francisco, said he’d been open to the idea of trading the handle, but X didn’t end up providing him with any financial compensation for it.
“When it all started happening, I thought maybe something cool would come out of it,” Hwang said. “In a way it was kind of like the fantasy of a winning lottery ticket. You buy the ticket and there’s some hope that maybe you’ll win something, but you also know that’s probably not going to happen.”
Hwang added that people had told him he could possibly get a Tesla Model X or a ride on a SpaceX rocket out of it.