Twitter is back? U.S. startup revives bluebird brand
U.S. startup Operation Bluebird has launched Twitter.now, a new social network using the former Twitter name and familiar bluebird branding as it challenges X Corp. over rights to the abandoned trademarks, reports a Qazinform News Agency correspondent.
Operation Bluebird argues that X relinquished its rights to the Twitter and Tweet trademarks after Elon Musk acquired the platform and subsequently rebranded it as X.
X Corp. has challenged the startup in court and sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the launch. A written ruling on the trademark dispute has yet to be issued.
Despite the legal battle, Operation Bluebird has opened Twitter.now for early access.
“When X Corp. retired the Twitter brand, we saw an opportunity to build something new: a public square organized around trust, transparency, and user choice,” co-founder Stephen Coates said in a LinkedIn post.
Coates stressed that the company is not seeking to recreate the original social network.
“Twitter.now is not an attempt to recreate the old platform. We are building a different service, with trust signals that provide context for what users see and tools that allow people, not an opaque algorithm, to decide how much credibility and noise reach their feeds,” he said.
The platform's guiding principle, according to Coates, is “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach.”
One of its key features is Vera, an automated fact-checking tool powered by Google Gemini that examines posts for accuracy. Operation Bluebird says it wants to create a platform built around trust, transparency and greater user control over content.
Unlike the original Twitter, early access is currently paid. Users can pay $20 for “Founder” status, while contributions of $40 or more provide “Fighter” status and a special bluebird badge.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that xAI founder Elon Musk had said the company’s next artificial intelligence model, Grok 4.6, was expected to launch around August 7, with the more advanced Grok 4.7 set to follow a few weeks later.
