After rebranding, X took @x from its original Twitter owner and offered him merch

The new X sign is installed Friday on the roof of the San Francisco headquarters of Twitter, which is being rebranded as “X.” Elon Musk killed off the Twitter logo on Monday, replacing the world-recognized blue bird with an X as the tycoon accelerates his efforts to transform the floundering social media giant.
Julie Jammot/AFP via Getty Images
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Julie Jammot/AFP via Getty Images
The new X sign is installed Friday on the roof of the San Francisco headquarters of Twitter, which is being rebranded as “X.” Elon Musk killed off the Twitter logo on Monday, replacing the world-recognized blue bird with an X as the tycoon accelerates his efforts to transform the floundering social media giant.
Julie Jammot/AFP via Getty Images
Gene X Hwang knew his days on Twitter as @x were numbered.
“Elon had been kind of tweeting about X previously,” Hwang said. “So I kind of knew, you know, I had an inkling that this was going to happen. I didn’t really know when.”
Since 2007, Hwang’s username on the site was @x — but after Elon Musk renamed the social media platform to X earlier this week, it was only a matter of time before the company commandeered the ha