A Virginia-based startup called Operation Bluebird announced Monday that it has launched a new social media network under the revived Twitter name, going live at twitter.now. The company argues that Elon Musk’s X Corporation gave up rights to the Twitter identity when it rebranded in 2022.
“We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” cofounder Stephen Coates said. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.”
The core argument centers on Musk’s 2022 purchase of Twitter and his quick decision to change the company’s name to X. Coates and his colleagues contend that this move left the Twitter identity and intellectual property abandoned, creating an opening for Operation Bluebird to claim the trademarks associated with the brand, its bird logo, and the word “tweet.”
The Legal Fight With X Corporation
X Corporation moved quickly against the startup, filing suit late in 2025 and asking a federal judge in Delaware to issue a preliminary injunction to block the launch of a new Twitter. The dispute remains unresolved in the courts.
During an April 2026 hearing, US District Court Judge Colm Connolly delivered a tentative ruling from the bench, indicating that X appeared to have given up intellectual property claims over the word “tweet” and the Twitter bird logo, and possibly over the word “Twitter” itself. The judge has not yet issued a written order.
For Coates, who now serves as the general counsel for the new Twitter and held the same role during the company’s pre-Musk era, those remarks were enough to move forward. “It’s our opinion that X has abandoned its rights on the Twitter and tweet trademarks,” he said.
The company is careful to distance itself from the prior platform. Its website states that Operation Bluebird “picked up the name X Corp. walked away from and is rebuilding it on trust,” while adding, “We are not X, and we are not affiliated with X Corp.”
What the New Platform Offers
Still in an early stage, twitter.now currently has only a few hundred users. The network resembles the Twitter of old and its many offshoots, with familiar features such as replies and retweets.
Its standout addition is an automated fact-checking tool called Vera, described as a Gemini-based “veracity engine for real-time analysis” that runs on every post. Coates has been testing it by publishing obviously false statements, such as claiming George Washington was the second US president.
“Our first goal is to see if we can truly bring back a town square that’s safer and less harmful,” Coates said. “We say freedom of speech and not freedom of reach. We want people to say what they want, but we also want to create a platform that’s not financially locked into that viral content that’s harmful or inaccurate.”
Trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who has followed the case closely, said Operation Bluebird may have a “workable legal theory” that X abandoned the Twitter trademark, but the outcome is far from certain. “I would say that there’s an element of chutzpah to do this, and they’re going to get the best fight that X has,” he said.
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Image: arstechnica.com
