What if Your Twitter Handle is @X
Twitter’s rebranding may have polarized that universe, but there’s one chap who is worried stiff as his handle is now part of Musk’s rebranding
Barely a few days after Elon Musk decided to rebrand one of the world’s best known brands, the Twitter universe is a divided lot, as was only expected. That the rollout was chaotic isn’t on our radar, given that some of us got X-rated while others survived the onslaught, for now. What was funnier is that the company forgot to acquire the @X handle on the microblogging platform.
Who says money can buy everything? Quite obviously it cannot acquire common sense. So, we have someone called Gene X Hwang of Orange photography actually owning the said Twitter handle and wondering whether all his tweets would be official henceforth. In the olden days, Gene would’ve made enough dollars to retire, but with Musk, one doesn’t know.
Just so that you know, the @X account is currently private and referenced to the San Francisco-based @orangephoto account which, in turn, credits its founders by the @X handle and another one called @jackhuynh. The names associated with these accounts read Gene X Hwang and Jack Huynh respectively, according to TechCrunch.
A rushed approach to rebranding is quite obvious
The article further quotes Hwang to suggest that nobody from Musk’s outfit actually reached out to him about his social handle. He’s quite clear that he’d be happy to party with the handle for a sum of money if it made sense to him. However, this is where the Musk philosophy kicks in. Till date none can say that he made sense to them all at once. It takes time!
(Source: cxotoday.com)
Ever since this story broke, several handles on the erstwhile Twitter have been taking potshots at the manner in which the world’s richest man (is he still so?) has gone about this exercise of dismantling the brand piece by piece – one for which he forked out $44 billion. Wonder if this is the first instance where a logo recognized the world over has been destroyed for ego’s sake.
But that’s not all, as we noted in the beginning of this post, Twitter’s rebranding has been haphazard, and that’s probably an understatement. Getting the @X handle is one thing, but ensuring that all references to Twitter gets removed on the new X website isn’t done. What’s funnier is that the main @Twitter handle got rebranded but the handle itself still remains, as does the reference to Twitter. There’s just an X on top. Beware! Elon Musk is watching.
There are 900 active trademarks covering X
And if you think rebranding gaffes are Musk’s biggest concern now, you’ve got another thing coming. Reports are already pouring in about how Microsoft owns the X trademark since 2003 related to the Xbox gaming. If that’s not enough, Meta has had a federal trademark since 2019 covering a blue-and-white letter X, which may not be similar to Musk’s X, but includes its use on social networking services.
Given that Musk took the legal recourse against Meta for its own microblogging site Threads, it remains to be seen how Team Zuckerberg and Team Nadella feel about the big billionaire stealing their X’es (pun intended). In fact, Reuter quotes trademark attorney Josh Gerben to suggest that there are 900 active US trademark registrations that cover X across industries.
There’s of course that small thing about wiping out brand value through this renaming charade. A report in Fortune magazine says that Musk may have wiped out between $4 and $20 billion from Twitter’s value as a brand. One that took the company 15 years to build. But, what’s money compared to bragging rights? Even if one were bragging about destroying something!
