Do you still miss the glory days of Twitter, when “to tweet” was a common verb in everyday speech and retweets actually meant something?
Well, Twitter and its associated trademarks could still come back, although not thanks to Elon Musk and his “everything app” project.
As reported by Ars Technica, a Virginia startup calling itself “Operation Bluebird” announced earlier this week that it has filed an official petition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to cancel X Corporation’s trademarks on the words “Twitter” and “tweet”, on the grounds that X has effectively stopped using them and abandoned the old Twitter brand.
One of the group’s founders, Stephen Coates, posted about the petition on LinkedIn this week, explaining that:
“After 12 months of quiet work under Operation Bluebird, we are coming out of stealth with a bold statement: we have filed a petition to cancel the TWITTER trademark and the new applications for TWITTER and TWEET. This is not about nostalgia. This is about fixing what was broken, because public space is worth fighting for.”
If they succeed, Operation Bluebird plans to launch its own version of Twitter at www.twitter.new, which would be the first step toward restoring Twitter to its former state.
As you can see, people are already signing up to reserve their account names on the new Twitter, although the likelihood that it will actually succeed as a full social network seems fairly low, and the chances that Elon will give up his former trademarks without a fight are also extremely slim.
Although he may not have much choice. Operation Bluebird was founded by trademark lawyers, one of whom previously worked at Twitter, and their claim is based on the fact that X is no longer using these trademarks. Therefore, it should have no legal grounds to keep them, and that is the loophole Operation Bluebird is trying to exploit to gain control of Twitter’s intellectual property.
Essentially, X Corp will have to prove that it is still using these terms in its operations. If not, it could lose them, whether it wants to or not, which would allow the Operation Bluebird team to launch a real Twitter alternative, both in name and in function.
Though again, it seems highly doubtful that Elon would allow that to happen, at least without a serious and likely lengthy legal fight, which could make the project outdated by the time it is resolved.
Musk has repeatedly shown pettiness in his business dealings, spending billions to go after people who offended him and trying to keep tight control over every element of virtually everything connected to his projects.
One example is Musk’s attempts to limit outbound links from X, especially to outlets he personally dislikes, because he wants people focused on X itself rather than clicking away to other publishers. Musk believes X is far more valuable than external outlets and websites give it credit for, and has explored various ways to force businesses to pay for the traffic they get from his app.
Musk has also threatened to sue Meta over Threads, which copied many key X features, and has considered legal action against other clones he believes are stealing his ideas.
All of this suggests he is not going to give up the Twitter trademarks without a battle, whether he uses them or not, and with a powerful legal team on his side, Operation Bluebird will face serious resistance.
And even if it does succeed, scaling a new social platform, even with the Twitter brand, would be a huge challenge.
So I doubt this project will become a major social media player, but it is worth watching, and it could indeed bring Twitter back, albeit in a different form.
Is that enough to lure you in? Would the return of the bird trigger enough nostalgia to kick off a whole new social ecosystem?
If this piqued your interest even a little, it might be worth visiting www.twitter.new and reserving your handle.
