Elon Musk replaced Twitter with X three years ago. Now another company is testing whether that rebrand left the Twitter name up for grabs.
Startup Operation Bluebird has launched Twitter.now, a social network built around the familiar Twitter name and posting format, while arguing that X abandoned its rights to the Twitter and Tweet trademarks. X disputes that claim and has sued the startup.
The fight turns Musk’s 2023 rebrand into an unusual legal and business question: can a company walk away from one of the internet’s most recognizable brands and still stop someone else from bringing it back?
Twitter.now launches while X fights the trademark claim
Twitter.now is not just a website holding the old name for recall purposes — it is a functioning social platform designed to feel familiar to anyone who used Twitter before the X rebrand.
Users can post, reply, repost, and interact through the same public-conversation format that made Twitter recognizable in the first place.
The platform has officially launched on a strictly paid model with no free tier. To use the network, users must purchase either a $20 “Founder” early access pass or a $40 “Fighter” status tier. Operation Bluebird positions these mandatory fees as a way to support platform development and fund its high-profile trademark battle to reclaim the Twitter brand.
Underneath that familiar shell is a platform Operation Bluebird says is designed differently.
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Can AI make Twitter better this time?
Attracting Twitter’s old audience is only half the challenge. Keeping that audience may depend on whether Twitter.now can avoid the problems it claims to have affected X.
The proposed answer is VERA, an AI system that uses Google’s Gemini models to analyze posts, assess claims, and provide context, sources, and trust signals.
Those signals are meant to power the platform’s planned Trust Dial, letting users decide content they want in their feeds based on confidence ranking rather than having the platform make every moderation decision for them.
That could give Twitter.now a distinct approach to misinformation. However, that also puts AI in the middle of content moderation — an area where automated systems can misread context, make incorrect judgments and create their own trust problems.
Why X’s new competition matters
Twitter.now enters a social-media market that already includes several alternatives to X, including Meta’s Threads and Bluesky. Its unusual advantage is not scale but familiarity: it is trying to build a new network around the identity X deliberately left behind.
The platform still has to attract enough users, creators and conversations to make its feeds worth returning to, while proving that its AI-assisted approach can deliver a better experience.
For readers, the social-media choice is getting wider, but the differences between these platforms are becoming more important. Threads offers Meta’s scale, Bluesky offers its own different approach, while Twitter.now is betting that people still want the old Twitter experience.
Twitter.now is betting that the old Twitter identity still carries enough cultural value to attract people who never warmed to X. The lawsuit will determine whether the startup can continue using that identity, but the harder test may come afterward.
A recognizable name can get people through the door. Building the network effects, moderation systems and trust that kept the original Twitter relevant will be much harder.
Other Social Media News: Meta has agreed to pay up to $18 billion and introduce new Facebook and Instagram restrictions for teenagers to settle claims that its platforms were designed to encourage addictive use.