The name "Twitter" and its blue bird logo have returned to the internet via a new social platform called "Twitter Now" or Twitter.now, launched by an American startup in its early-access phase — despite an ongoing legal dispute with the company X over trademark rights.
اضافة اعلان
Behind the project is a company called Operation Bluebird, registered in the state of Virginia, which claims that X legally abandoned the "Twitter" and "Tweet" trademarks when Elon Musk renamed the original platform "X" and removed the blue bird logo and Twitter-related terminology from the company's products and marketing.
However, this claim represents only the startup's position in a dispute that has not been legally resolved, while X maintains ownership of the name and logo and accuses its rival of trying to exploit the fame of one of the world's most recognizable brands.
Stephen Coates, one of the founders of Operation Bluebird and a former trademark attorney at Twitter, said: "We are a small company, we have investors and we have a product. We waited many long months to launch it, and we won't wait any longer," as quoted by Ars Technica.
Early Access for $20
The platform opened early access to users for $20, allowing them to reserve their account names and receive a number and badge marking them as founding members.
The platform also offers another tier starting at $40 in contributions, calling its backers "fighters," saying the funds will go toward product development and financing the legal battle over the name.
This doesn't mean the platform is now open to all users — it remains in the early-access phase, with plans to open to larger numbers later, according to the official Twitter.now website.
The company presents its project as an attempt to rebuild a digital public square for conversation and breaking news, with an emphasis on what it describes as trust, transparency, and giving users greater control over the content they see.
It plans to develop a system called VERA that would give posts trust indicators, alongside a tool letting users set the level of content they want to see.
The company says its goal is to reduce the spread of low-trust content rather than deleting it or banning its creator, though these features remain part of the platform's broader vision and some have not yet been fully rolled out.
X Refuses to Give Up Twitter
The return of the "Twitter" name has not been legally settled — in December 2025, X filed a lawsuit in a federal court in Delaware against Operation Bluebird, accusing it of trademark infringement and attempting to profit from the name's fame to attract users.
The lawsuit came after the startup asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel X's "Twitter" trademark registrations and filed its own application to register the mark under its name.
In its lawsuit, X asserted that changing the platform's name does not amount to abandoning trademark rights, noting that millions of users still access its site through the domain twitter.com, which redirects them to x.com, in addition to the continued use of the terms "Twitter" and "tweet" by users and media outlets.
The company said in its filing that "Twitter is one of the most famous brands in the world, and it belongs to X," adding that "renaming the brand does not mean abandoning its rights," according to Reuters.
X asked the court to bar the startup from using the name and its associated marks, to reject its application to register the "Twitter" trademark, and sought unspecified financial damages.
A Non-Final Judicial Opinion
During a hearing held in April 2026, federal court judge Colm Connolly gave a preliminary opinion from the bench, suggesting that X may have abandoned its rights to the word "Tweet" and the blue bird logo, and possibly to the name "Twitter" as well.
However, this opinion was preliminary and verbal, and the judge has not yet issued a written ruling resolving the request to shut down the platform or determining ownership of the disputed marks, according to The Verge.
As things stand, the "Twitter" name has effectively returned to the internet, but its survival remains contingent on the outcome of the legal battle with X — and on whether the original platform's shift to its new identity amounted to a legal abandonment of the name it carried since its 2006 launch, or merely a rebranding that left its ownership rights untouched
