The Logos of Social Media Giants

Social Media can be defined as a group of technologies that are designed primarily to exchange information for social purposes. It’s a concept that seems obvious in retrospect to some people, while even today it’s something so alien to the psychology of some people that they’re still having trouble getting their heads around it. It’s a phenomenon that not only didn’t exist 20 years ago the very idea didn’t exist. But it’s here now and it’s impossible to be connected to the modern information network of the internet without encountering it in some form or another.  

Social media seems to be primarily about social display. It’s about people sharing images and texts as signals about their lives and interests to anyone who is willing to see and listen, and even to people who couldn’t care less. It’s created the capacity for anyone with a camera, access to the internet, and the appropriate skills to become a source of media content. It’s therefore potentially a source of influence and power, especially to the companies that are the major players providing platforms for that content.  

The world’s largest social media platforms, in terms of usage and number of users are: 

A number of these names you might not be familiar with unless you deal a lot with China, but it’s hardly surprising that China, given its isolationist attitude to communication and its great size, should have major social media players.

You might be surprised to see Twitter so low on the list, but even its number of users is larger than the entire population of the United States of America.  

Given their power, influence and economic stature, it stands to reason that these companies should have trademarks that are well known and easily recognizable, and there’s story behind each and every logo, although some of these stories are more interesting that others.

Facebook – a white lower case eff or the whole word “facebook” in lower case against a mid-blue background. Designed by Mike Buzzard of Cuban Council in 2007 it was created to be simple and because Facebook’s CEO has a form of color blindness called deuteranopia. It turns out that those who have deuteranopia find blue to be a color that they can quickly identify.

YouTube – Between 2004 and 2017 the site’s name in Alternate Gothic Typeface with the “You” in black against a white background and the “Tube” within a dark red rectangle inside a red rectangle with rounded corners reminiscent of an old cathode-ray tube television screen. Since 2017 it’s now a “pure red” rounded rectangle with a white triangle – the now universal symbol for “play” with the entire “YouTube” now to its right in simple “almost black” on white. The typeface is now a modification of Alternate Gothic and is called “YouTube”. The logo also included the words “Broadcast Yourself” until 2015. The whole logo was designed to convey the YouTube idea of being a platform to share videos in the simplest way possible and to bridge the gap between the outdated but familiar ideas of “tube TVs” and “play buttons”.

What’s App is an example of yet another logo that’s barely changed through the years. A simple round text talk bubble in mid greed with a central white symbol of a mid-20th century landline telephone handset has now evolved into the original logo surrounded by a standard round-cornered square with the word “WhatsApp” written below in white. An interesting point is that the text bubble tail point means “text received” if it points to the left and “text sent” if it points to the right. The standard round-cornered square is called a “squircle” or even more precisely an “approximate quintic superellipse” and it has become, at least for the time being, the require standard shape to enclose an icon for an app on an Apple or iOS device as well as android devices.

Instagram has only been around since 2010 and the original logo designed by its co-founder Kevin Systrom was simply a photograph of an old-fashioned polaroid cameral within a squircle icon shape. Systrom then consulted photographer designer Cole Rise to create a more abstract representation based on a Bell and Howard camera from the 1950s. In 2016 the logo became a very abstract reduction of the camera idea of a squircle in an orange / pink and purple blend reminiscent of a sunset within which a round-cornered white square line represented the camera body a central white ring represented the camera lense and a small white dot toe the upper right of the circle represented the flash. The word “Instagram” written to the right of the icon logo in black on white is the “Instagram” font based on the Avangard Regular and Blue Vinyl Regular fonts where the letters create a running writing effect.

The Snapchat logo of an abstract white shape on a yellow background is called “Ghostface Chillah” and is based on the Ghostface Killa logo of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan – according to CEO Evan Spiegal. The idea of a ghost being representative of the idea of a vanishing image, in that Snapchat images are also deleted after a certain amount of time.

And finally, the blue Twitter Bird has had several versions since 2006 but the modern logo by Doug Bowman that we’ve seen since 2012 is base on a combination of a mountain bluebird and a hummingbird. The upward pointing head and beak represents “the ultimate representation of freedom, hope and limitless possibility.” You may make of that what you will.