'X' Handle Taken from Twitter User After Elon Musk Announced Sudden Rebranding of Company

San Francisco photographer Gene Hwang had owned the handle since 2007, per multiple reports

A California man lost his handle after Twitter rebranded to X this week.

San Francisco photographer Gene X Hwang had to turn over the handle @x on Tuesday after having it since 2007, according to NBC News and Insider.

Hwang told Mashable that he received an email from the social media company “basically saying they are taking it,” despite having no contact with them beforehand.

He also claimed that the company did not offer any monetary compensate him for suddenly taking his handle, nor did they apologize, per the reports.

"Some amount of money or compensation doesn't seem like it would be too big a deal for them," Hwang told Insider. "I definitely would have accepted something for it, but I also wasn't trying to extort money or anything like that."

Related: Elon Musk Announces Linda Yaccarino as New Twitter CEO: 'I Am Excited'

However, they did offer to give him some merchandise in addition to “an exclusive visit to X’s HQ to meet members of our team.”

“We appreciate your loyalty and want to minimize the inconvenience this will cause,” read the letter to Hwang, who now goes by the username @x12345678998765.

Hwang said he “probably will not take them up on the offer to meet,” but plans to stay on the platform for now, according to Mashable.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The photographer said he initially hoped the branding would lead to "something cool" happening.

"In a way, it was kind of like the fantasy of a winning lottery ticket," Hwang told Insider. "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."

In his first post on the site since changing his username change, Hwang simply wrote, “Alls well that ends well.”

Related: Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta Over Threads

Musk, 52, used the platform to announce the name change on Sunday.

"Twitter was acquired by X Corp both to ensure freedom of speech and as an accelerant for X, the everything app. This is not simply a company renaming itself, but doing the same thing," he wrote.
"The Twitter name made sense when it was just 140 character messages going back and forth – like birds tweeting – but now you can post almost anything, including several hours of video."

"In the months to come, we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world," he added. "The Twitter name does not make sense in that context, so we must bid adieu to the bird."

For now, X.com redirects to Twitter.com, where users still "tweet" and "retweet."

The new logo for the company appears to resemble what’s called a Unicode character known as “Mathematical Double-Struck Capital X,” according to NBC News. The company told the outlet that X is “free to use” all Unicode characters.

Hundreds of companies, including tech giants Meta and Microsoft, already have trademarks on the letter X, NBC News and Reuters reported.

Microsoft trademarked the letter in connection with Xbox, its widely popular video-game console, since 2003, according to Reuters. Meta received its trademark to use a blue-and-white X in software and social media in 2019.

For more People news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

Read the original article on People.