Owner of @x Twitter handle says no one reached out ahead of Twitter’s rebranding to ‘X’ – By Sarah Perez (Techcrunch) / July 25, 2023
Twitter’s rebranding to X has not been faring well. In addition to the haphazard rollout, which saw parts of the site referencing “X” while other parts still implored you to “search Twitter” or push a blue button to “Tweet,” the company also didn’t secure the intellectual property rights to the X brand, Reuters reported. Plus, Twitter didn’t get a permit to take down the Twitter sign from its San Francisco headquarters, requiring police intervention to stop the work. And, as TechCrunch discovered, the company didn’t even make an attempt to secure the @x Twitter handle, owned by Gene X Hwang of corporate photography and videography studio Orange Photography.
The @x account is currently set to private, but is referenced by the San Francisco-based @orangephoto account, which credits its founders by their Twitter handles “@x & @jackhuynh,” or Gene X Hwang and Jack Huynh, respectively.
According to Hwang, no one from the company formerly known as Twitter has yet to reach out to him about the @x account he operates, but notes he would be happy to have a conversation if they ever did so.