Is the Twitter Brand Primed for a Return Flight?

'Operation Bluebird' spreads its wings

This week, news broke that Twitter might actually be resurrected. An outfit called “Operation Bluebird” filled to cancel X Corp.’s trademarks with the intention of relaunching the beloved and discarded brand.

If you venture over to Twitter.new (or New Twitter), in addition to throwing shade at the current owner—in reference to a brand that was handed the Twitterverse and “burned it all down”—the newbie announced, “We’ve filed to claim the Twitter trademark. This isn’t about nostalgia. This is about fixing what broke. And we think the public square is worth fighting for.”

And here I was thinking this is absolutely about nostalgia! Speaking of the past, and I’m referring to the golden age of social media, when “follow us on Twitter and Facebook” was still culturally relevant. #NewTwitter will forever be synonymous with its numerous platform redesign rollouts over the years, e.g. “Take a Tour of the New Twitter” from 2010.

While few details are known, according to documents, the petition to reclaim the social media platform was filed by one of Twitter’s former trademark lawyers, who now serves as Operation Bluebird’s general counsel. So it seems like this plan is in good hands.

As a digital content strategist and human who never stopped using the verbiage “tweet/retweet,” naturally this news resonated with me. However, at this point, I’m reminded of a Project Runway episode in which judge Nina Garcia said, “I’ve seen this dress before, and I don’t need to see it again.”

Right now, we’re all suffering from platform fatigue. We already have X (formerly Twitter, of course), which has an estimated 400 million monthly active users worldwide. Then there’s Bluesky, which was launched by Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter, with over 30 million users. And my goodness, there’s Threads, which Meta says has over 400 million monthly active users.

But we’re talking about TWITTER here. So let’s see how this plays out.

If it does in fact return, here’s what I hope to see:

• “Old Twitter.” Make it about nostalgia! (It works for Reddit.)
• 140-characters. Threads are fine for tweetstorms, but none of this 25,000 characters stuff.
• Fail Whale when the website is overcapacity.
• The original, no payment blue checkmark verification process for authentic, notable accounts.
• No promoted tweets/trends/accounts (but I realize that’s asking a lot).
• An end to having to group Twitter/X as one platform every single time I create a social media strategy plan and data report.

While we wait to see what happens with the trademark, the folks at New Twitter are hoping for the best while taking handle requests. And if I’ve learned anything, it’s that early adopters get to be members of the “first name club.” At present, 119K handles have been spoken for. So if by some miracle I was early enough this time around, my apologies to anyone named Leslie.

Will 2026 be the year #NewTwitter “breaks the Internet?” I’ll be rooting for it to happen.