( CNN ) -- Remember Alex from Target ? He took the Internet by storm this week with his good looks and strong work ethic , causing many to swoon and others to curse the power of social media . Now a tech startup is claiming responsibility for making # alexfromtarget one of the `` most amazing social media experiments ever . '' But it 's unclear whether the company really deserves the credit . The CEO of Breakr , a company that claims to connect `` fans with their fandom , '' said in a LinkedIn post Tuesday that the company harnessed social media 's `` powerful fangirl demographic '' to make Alex Lee , a real , 16-year-old Target employee from Texas , a global trending topic . According to Breakr , the company took the photo of Alex Lee that was posted by a Twitter user named Abbie ( @ auscalum ) and fanned Twitter 's flames , `` spreading the word amongst our fangirl followers to trend # AlexFromTarget . '' The company says it then added `` fuel to the fire by tweeting about it to our bigger YouTube influencers . '' The conversation then spread through people supporting the hashtag `` just to trend it '' and others raging over the fact that a guy could become `` Internet famous '' just for his looks , Breakr CEO Dil-Domine Jacobe Leonares said . People tweeted parody images and created YouTube videos while the media , including CNN , published stories about it . `` It was based on looks , '' Leonares told CNN late Tuesday . `` You put a good looking guy in front of girls , girls are going to go crazy over him . '' But not everyone 's buying Breakr 's trending power . Many have raised an interesting question : Is n't revealing the `` man behind the curtain , '' so to speak , a giant no-no in the social media world ? Adding to the confusion are Alex and Abbie themselves . The `` fangirl '' Leonares credited with boosting the trend and `` Alex from Target '' both posted on Twitter that they have no connection to Breakr . Breakr later clarified that Abbie 's not an employee , but simply a Twitter user whose tweet the company claims to have amplified . That backtracking is just one reason why David Orr , who claims to be one of the largest social media influencers on Twitter , is also skeptical about Breakr 's involvement . `` Breakr is already backing down on their claims and is trying to make it clear that they never employed @ auscalum , '' Orr wrote in an e-mail to CNN . `` Breakr is extremely vague on their actual relationship with her , alex , or what influence they actually had . '' Orr says # AlexFromTarget really started trending when @ GirlPosts tweeted it out . The account has nearly 5 million followers , and the photo was retweeted more than 20,000 times , and favorited by 44,000 people .
Breakr also claims credit for making # AlexFromTarget a global news story . But Alex from Target says he has no connection to the startup . Alex is a real employee of a Target store in Texas .