What's In A Tweet?

What does it mean to "tweet"? In 1972, the year of Michael Jackson's debut solo album and his chart-topping hit cover of Rockin' Robin, the answer was easy—tweeting is what a robin does. But a networked person in 2011 would give a different answer. To "tweet" is to use the internet service Twitter^® to broadcast a pithy message to your entire social network—a system useful for anything from organizing the overthrow of an oppressive regime, to informing the world that you are eating a sandwich ... a really good sandwich. But when Twitter sought to register the term, which has become one of the most internationally recognized marks of our day, the application was denied.

The denial was due to a prior service mark registration owned by Twittad, a company that provides advertising services on Twitter, for the tagline "Let Your Ad Meet Tweets." Because the word "Tweets" in this phrase is a direct reference to Twitter's services, Twitter was understandably displeased