The Twitter Logo, and Thoughts About Branding.

Did you ever notice that the Twitter bird is never  the same bird?

What started with Google – changing and morphing it’s logo and image when ever it feels like it – has moved a notch up with Twitter.
Twitter and especially it’s bird are continuously changing. This change is not one lead by Twitter, but rather by it’s many fans and users.

Here is a titanic change in the the way we view branding. Twitter is the first company (with such mass market appeal) that has let it’s branding loose in such a way. It seems that as long as the logo typography and (any kind of) bird is there, anything else goes. And the evolution continues, lately we see just the Twitter bird, no name. In other words the whole logo is now constantly changing.

To be true, Twitter may be a leader in this, but it is not the pioneer. Google is the brand that brought us this change in the concept of branding. For several years now, Google has been morphing and changing its logo to celebrate any and all occasions. No major brand before Google has let the reins of it’s brand run loose in such a way. Take Kodak for example, it took about 40 year between logo changes.

So, what does the great Twitter logo experiment tell us?
Well, for one, it tells us that customizing one’s logo can lead to greater popularity, but probably only if the brand is already popular to begin with. It is sort of a chicken and egg thing; Twitter would not find popularity without letting go of it’s brand, and it’s brand would not need morphing if it was not that popular to begin with.

So is this a good strategy ?
Is sending off your logo into the world and just letting the world have at it, a good idea?

The “clear” answer is, unclear, mostly because we are still in the eye of the storm. We are in the age of user generated content, but does logo changing count as “user generated” content or is this more user participation. Again, not everyone will agree, but what is clear is that if users are getting to participate with your company logo, they are getting to know your brand, even if they re-inventing it along the way. The re-invention of the brand is also the personalization of that brand and in that lies the big prize. If users see the brand as their own, then there is a personal connection with that brand, which is the key to marketing success.

The marketing and design of the Twitter logo gives us a good look into how user generated content turns to user generated marketing, how successful is that strategy, only time will tell.

Here are 11 different iterations of the twitter logo, as you see, one begins to wander if they are all “legal”:

This is a close as you can get to the original, and the badges below are a good follow up, but from there, well, all hell broke loose:

From time to time you can find the more inspirational twitter logo.