Comments on: Are you Canadian?

By: Penfold

Penfold — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 01:12:06 +0000

Blue, bird, post

By: aj kohn

aj kohn — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:33:30 +0000

Micah,

Interesting how one red leaf can have such an impact. Though you have a special context because you’ve been living there for 15 years.

Dan,

Molson! Yes, that makes a good deal of sense and still skitters down the same Canadian theme. And you’re right, if Twitter were to drop dead tomorrow it would take quite a long time for the blue bird icon to take on any other meaning.

Thank you both for reading and commenting.

By: Dan M

Dan M — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:24:26 +0000

Great post! I actually thought of Molson Canadian (the beer) upon seeing the red leaf, because their logo is a red leaf in that kind of one-off shape. The bird is a great example too, because even if Twitter dropped dead tomorrow, many people would still associate any blue bird icon with it for the foreseeable future.

By: Micah Wittman

Micah Wittman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:44:05 +0000

Yep, got me too. I _didn’t_ think of Twitterific specifically, just the Twitter / its ecosystem.

Also, with the red leaf, it was instantly Canada/Canadian. Of course I l’ve lived there for 15 years now.

By: AJ Kohn

AJ Kohn — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 16:56:40 +0000

Micah,

Spot on. The fact that the icon I used is not actually a Twitter icon is precisely one of the points I was trying to make.

In the context of the Internet and the Web 2.0 world (of which this blog is lumped into to some degree) a blue bird (of nearly any sort) may trigger an association with Twitter. That’s a powerful sort of marketing.

My other point is what feelings that blue bird (and it’s mental association with Twitter) elicits from a viewer. Your mind might skip to themes like microblogging, social media and the number 140.

But depending on your experience with Twitter, microblogging and social media you might associate those things with brilliant, cutting-edge and fun or fad, over-hyped and inane.

So even if the icon trips the right brand, it can still produce a very different data stream based on your own experience. And in aggregate that data stream will change as Twitter’s place in the Web 2.0 landscape changes.

Thanks for reading and participating!

By: Micah

Micah — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 17:09:07 +0000

Twitter, Songbird, Blue

Oddly enough (or maybe this was your point) that isn’t the Twitter icon. It is the icon for Twitterific: http://iconfactory.com/software/twitterrific

Twitter’s official bird has undergone a couple of iterations. Despite the fact that they haven’t stuck with a single look, they’ve managed to get our minds to relate just about any small blue bird with Twitter.