A quiz

One of these is the Twitter Bird. The other is not. Do you know which one?

The bird on the left actually belongs to Twitter. It shows up on twitter.com from time to time, most notably when you try to hit a profile page that doesn’t exist:

The bird on the right has nothing, officially to do with Twitter. It’s the copyrighted logo/icon for The Icon Factory’s application Twitterific. In fact, the Icon Factory, officially does not allow the use of their bird icon if it’s being used to represent Twitter, (a fact I learned from Charles Strickland’s blog post “Stop Using the Twitterific Icon!)” Officially condemned or not, using the Icon Factory’s mark to promote Twitter is becoming a trend one runs into frequently. Here’s an example:

Now…am I picking on Noupe? Nope. Just to prove that I am an amiable sort, I’ll admit that I made the exact same mistake last summer in my (as yet undeveloped) Tweetionary design:

Why did I do this? Simple: I didn’t know any better.

Unfortunately, for The Icon Factory, they have created a truly…well…iconic icon. The Twitterific bird is arguably more recognizable then any of the marks officially in use by Twitter. (As far as I know, the bubbly, light blue “Twitter” letter mark at the top of the “page doesn’t exist” image is the official Twitter logo, although i would argue that the Fail Whale is more recognizable). The Twitterific bird looks like the strong brand icon of an internet phenomenon like Twitter… especially if you don’t think to do the research.

Weak branding by Twitter encourages bloggers and site owners to come up with their own branding to promote their Twitter streams. The result is hundreds of different interpretations of a blue cartoon bird. Each one of those instances of a user created Twitter brand is a waste opportunity for Twitter to manufacture a consistent brand identity.

The Design Superhero (an extremely hot site that I just found through the magic of google), actually has compiled some of the myriad ways people represent twitter on their sites. (seriously…click on that link. I’ll wait…  …  …you back? How hot was that site design?!)

You can’t really blame the Icon Factory, can you? Making strong marks and icons is what they do. The real question is, why hasn’t Twitter established a more cohesive branding strategy with better, more recognizable marks? They have a network of downright evangelical users who want to promote their brand for them for free. All they need to do is come up with a strong brand identity, and make it really easy to syndicate that identity across tens of thousands of user websites.

At the very least, as web designers we can be aware that Twitterific and the Icon Factory probably shouldn’t be asked to do Twitter’s branding work for them, and stop using their bird to represent anything but Twitterific.

-oAk-