New Twitter launches, says Musk’s X gave up the name

全新 Twitter 上线，称马斯克的 X 已放弃该名称

Operation Bluebird, the Virginia-based startup trying to revive the allegedly abandoned “Twitter” name and logo, announced Monday that it has launched its new social media network: Twitter.now. 总部位于弗吉尼亚州的初创公司 Operation Bluebird 致力于复兴被认为已被废弃的“Twitter”名称和标志。该公司周一宣布，其全新的社交媒体网络 Twitter.now 已正式上线。

“We are a small company, we have investors, and we have a product,” Stephen Coates, one of Operation Bluebird’s cofounders, told Ars. “And we have waited months and months to launch, and we are not going to wait anymore.” “我们是一家小公司，我们有投资者，也有产品，”Operation Bluebird 的联合创始人之一斯蒂芬·科茨（Stephen Coates）告诉 Ars，“我们已经等待了数月之久，不想再等下去了。”

As Ars reported in December 2025, Coates and his coterie believe that when Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and quickly changed the company’s name to X, the Twitter identity and intellectual property were abandoned. Musk’s decision, they claim, created the opening for Operation Bluebird to claim Twitter’s trademarks. 正如 Ars 在 2025 年 12 月报道的那样，科茨及其团队认为，当埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）在 2022 年收购 Twitter 并迅速将公司更名为 X 时，Twitter 的品牌标识和知识产权就已经被放弃了。他们声称，马斯克的这一决定为 Operation Bluebird 抢注 Twitter 商标创造了机会。

But Musk’s X Corporation quickly sued Operation Bluebird late last year and asked a federal judge in Delaware to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent a new version of Twitter from launching. However, in an April 2026 hearing, US District Court Judge Colm Connolly gave a tentative ruling from the bench that X seemed to have given up intellectual property claims over the word “tweet” and the Twitter bird logo—and possibly even on the word “Twitter” as well. The judge has yet to issue a written order. 但马斯克的 X 公司去年底迅速起诉了 Operation Bluebird，并请求特拉华州的一名联邦法官发布初步禁令，以阻止新版 Twitter 上线。然而，在 2026 年 4 月的一次听证会上，美国地方法院法官科尔姆·康诺利（Colm Connolly）当庭作出初步裁定，认为 X 公司似乎已经放弃了对“tweet”一词和 Twitter 小蓝鸟标志的知识产权主张，甚至可能也放弃了对“Twitter”一词的权利。目前，法官尚未发布书面裁决。

For Coates, who serves as Twitter’s new general counsel and previously worked in the same role during the pre-Musk era, the judge’s words were enough to serve as a green light. “It’s our opinion that X has abandoned its rights on the Twitter and tweet trademarks,” he said. 对于担任 Twitter 新任总法律顾问的科茨来说（他曾在马斯克时代之前担任过同一职务），法官的话足以被视为“绿灯”。他说：“我们认为，X 公司已经放弃了对 Twitter 和 tweet 商标的权利。”

Still, the new Twitter takes great pains to put daylight between itself and the previous iteration of Twitter. “Operation Bluebird, Inc. picked up the name X Corp. walked away from and is rebuilding it on trust, in your browser at twitter.now,” it states prominently on its website. “We are not X, and we are not affiliated with X Corp.” 尽管如此，新版 Twitter 还是极力撇清与旧版 Twitter 的关系。其网站上显著地写道：“Operation Bluebird 公司拾起了 X 公司抛弃的名称，并正在通过浏览器端的 twitter.now 建立基于信任的平台。我们不是 X，也与 X 公司没有任何关联。”

Neither the X Corporation, nor Elon Musk, nor Andrew Mayo, one of X’s attorneys, immediately responded to Ars’ request for comment. X 公司、埃隆·马斯克以及 X 公司的律师之一安德鲁·梅奥（Andrew Mayo）均未立即回应 Ars 的置评请求。

Twitter.now, still in its nascent stage, only has hundreds of users for the time being. The social media network looks and feels much like the Twitter of old and many of its offshoots—it has replies and retweets. Twitter.now 目前仍处于起步阶段，用户仅有数百人。该社交媒体网络在外观和操作上与旧版 Twitter 及其许多衍生产品非常相似，具备回复和转发功能。

A new and notable feature is the automated fact-checking tool, a Gemini-based “veracity engine for real-time analysis” (“Vera” for short), which runs on every tweet. 一个值得注意的新功能是自动事实核查工具，这是一个基于 Gemini 的“实时分析真实性引擎”（简称“Vera”），它会针对每一条推文运行。

Coates has been testing Vera in recent days by posting obviously false messages, like “George Washington was our second president.” “Our first goal is to see if we can truly bring back a town square that’s safer and less harmful,” he said. “We say freedom of speech and not freedom of reach. We want people to say what they want, but we also want to create a platform that’s not financially locked into that viral content that’s harmful or inaccurate.” 科茨最近几天一直在测试 Vera，他发布了一些明显的虚假信息，例如“乔治·华盛顿是我们的第二任总统”。他说：“我们的首要目标是看看能否真正带回一个更安全、危害更小的公共广场。我们主张言论自由，而非传播自由。我们希望人们畅所欲言，但我们也希望创建一个在财务上不依赖于有害或不准确的病毒式内容的平台。”

Josh Gerben, a Washington, DC-based trademark attorney who has been closely following this case, told Ars that while Operation Bluebird may have a “workable legal theory” that X Corporation has abandoned the Twitter trademark, it’s not an open-and-shut case. 一直密切关注此案的华盛顿特区商标律师乔什·格本（Josh Gerben）告诉 Ars，虽然 Operation Bluebird 关于 X 公司已放弃 Twitter 商标的“法律理论”可能行得通，但这并不是一个简单的案件。

“I would say that there’s an element of chutzpah to do this, and they’re going to get the best fight that X has,” he said. “It was one thing to file the trademark application; now that they’ve launched, there will be another response from [X Corporation],” he said. “They’ve really upped the ante now. It’s a really interesting escalation of the case. Go put another round of popcorn in the microwave!” “我认为这样做带有一种厚颜无耻的成分，他们将面临 X 公司最强有力的反击，”他说，“提交商标申请是一回事，现在他们已经上线了，[X 公司]肯定会有进一步的反应。他们现在确实加大了赌注。这让案件的升级变得非常有趣。快去微波炉里再爆一轮爆米花吧！”