Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup seeking to revive the abandoned Twitter name and bird logo, has launched a new social media platform called Twitter.now.
Stephen Coates, one of the company’s cofounders and its general counsel, said the team had been waiting for months to launch but decided it was time to move forward. The platform currently has only a few hundred users but is designed to resemble the original Twitter experience, including familiar features such as replies and retweets.
The launch comes amid an ongoing legal dispute with X Corporation, which sued Operation Bluebird late last year. The startup argues that Elon Musk’s decision to purchase Twitter in 2022 and rename the company X resulted in the abandonment of important Twitter-related intellectual property.
A federal court hearing in April 2026 provided some encouragement for Operation Bluebird. US District Court Judge Colm Connolly tentatively indicated from the bench that X appeared to have abandoned intellectual property claims involving the word “tweet” and the Twitter bird logo, and possibly the Twitter name itself. However, the judge has not yet issued a written order.
Coates, who previously served as Twitter’s general counsel before Musk’s takeover, said the company considers the judge’s comments sufficient to move ahead with the launch.
Twitter.now is careful to distinguish itself from Musk’s X. The company’s website says Operation Bluebird acquired the name that X Corp. walked away from and is rebuilding it as a new platform. It also explicitly states that Twitter.now is not X and has no affiliation with X Corp.
The platform’s most notable addition is an automated fact-checking system called Vera. The Gemini-based tool is described as a “veracity engine for real-time analysis” and is designed to analyze posts as they are published.
Coates has been testing Vera by posting deliberately false claims, including the statement that George Washington was the second president of the United States, to demonstrate how the system responds.
Operation Bluebird says its goal is to create a social platform that provides greater protection against harmful or inaccurate viral content while maintaining freedom of speech. The company distinguishes between allowing people to say what they want and actively giving misleading or harmful content greater reach.
The legal future of Twitter.now remains uncertain. Trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who has been following the dispute, said Operation Bluebird may have a viable argument that X abandoned the Twitter trademark, but he does not consider the case settled.
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With Twitter.now now officially launched, the dispute is likely to enter another phase as X Corporation responds to the startup’s move.
