Twitter is fully embracing the “X” branding. Earlier this month, Twitter owner Elon Musk announced that Twitter would adopt the “X” logo and moniker, setting the original blue-coloured bird free. The company has already replaced the Twitter bird logo with X. Now, it has also changed its official username to match the company’s new identity. However, by doing so, the company seems to have taken the “X” username from the original owner without any financial compensation or warning.
As reported by Mashable, the original “X” username belonged to one Twitter user, Gene X Hwang, who has been using it since 2007. Hwang is a co-founder of an event photo company, Orange Photography, and is among the rare users on Twitter whose username has only a single letter. Given that there are only 26 letters in the English language, usernames with single characters are much more valuable. Usernames on websites are unique and can’t be replicated to protect users’ online identities.
The same applies to website URLs. For instance, Musk bought the X.com domain from PayPal in 2017 for reportedly over a million.
