A Virginia-based startup has launched a new social media platform called Twitter.now, arguing that Elon Musk’s X Corporation abandoned the Twitter name and related trademarks after rebranding the service in 2023.
Operation Bluebird, founded by former Twitter trademark counsel Stephen Coates and attorney Michael Peroff, announced the launch earlier this week. The company maintains that X stopped using the Twitter brand, the word “tweet” and the blue bird logo, creating an opening under US trademark law.
“We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Coates told Ars Technica. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.”
In a LinkedIn post, Coates said the platform was built around “trust, transparency, and user choice.” He added: “Our governing principle is simple: freedom of speech, not freedom of reach. Twitter is a reclaimed brand. We are not X and are not affiliated with X Corp.”
The startup filed a petition with the US Patent and Trademark Office in December 2025 seeking to cancel X’s trademarks, stating that the Twitter and Tweet brands had been “eradicated from X Corp.’s products, services, and marketing.” X Corporation sued Operation Bluebird, asserting that “Twitter never left and continues to be exclusively owned by X Corp.”
In an April 2026 hearing, a federal judge in Delaware gave a tentative indication from the bench that X may have abandoned rights to the word “tweet,” the bird logo and possibly the Twitter name itself. No final written order has been issued.
Twitter.now is currently available in limited early access, with users paying a fee to join and claim handles. The service aims to restore familiar features such as tweets and retweets while introducing an AI system that assigns trust scores to content.
X has not yet publicly responded to the latest launch.
