Where Twitter Are Going With Their Less Cute Athletic New Logo Replacing The Old One

I don't know about you, but the old Twitter logo never seemed too bad to me. It was cute and it was as cuddly as a logo could be without having a set of big watery bug-eyes. It was a kid that didn't know where he was going and didn't really need to now for the time being. It was a plump likeable youngster with a messy set of hair, carelessly flying on not unlike the business strategy of early Twitter.

Its new 2012 older brother on the other hand has everything a teenager believes they do. It has attitude, it has style and it has its eyes in the sky. Larry the Bird suddenly knows where he's going. And he thinks he's going all the way to the top.

So now the Twitter bird is looking and flying up, it's more athletic and less cute, it has sacrificed one feather from it's wings to the God of streamlined design and it has had a haircut.

Why would they do this?

Well, it's beyond obvious at this point that Twitter are making it clear to everybody they mean business more than ever and that they are determined to make their new "promoted tweets" a success. Their revenue is already on the rise and some leaked information some time ago has revealed them to be planning for serious economic growth. For now they are on the right track and this logo redesign comes to show they are in battle mode already and their colors are flying high. Before building up their user base, expanding and creating a sustainable business model was more important, but now it's time to start doing real business with the big dogs.

So what's the battle?

All of the social networks are running after the same bone. They want to make themselves a part of every second of our life, monetizing it through presenting us with a constant stream of adds. This model has always been part of the Internet, but the old-school internet is no longer enough for social networks to grow exponentially, while this is their goal. So they have only one choice lying ahead of them. They need to monetize mobile, which hasn't really happened yet. We've seen some ads, but nothing that could rival Google's advertising champion AdSense.

Facebook vs. Twitter

The biggest social networks that are going to be fighting for mobile while their wanna-be rival Google+ is treading water are going to be Facebook and Twitter. The two companies have a very different approach to social networking and while Facebook is full of engaging features, Twitter is extremely simple. On the battle field of the PC-browsed Internet this simplicity might be somewhat appealing for some, but Facebook is just winning the war by engaging users for much longer times, giving them countless ways to waste their time and showing them new ads on every page load. Additionally Facebook has already added twitter-like functionality with Facebook Subscribe, making it hard for Twitter to attract new users from the Facebook guild. Why would someone leave Facebook in order to do something they can do on Facebook somewhere else?

But while Facebook is strengthening it's online dominance, Twitter was a social network born ready to go mobile with its minimalist approach. So Facebook might feel secure in its yard, but we all know how hard Facebook is struggling with mobile. If you are going to win over the mobile world, your product needs to be simple and Facebook has so many features, it needs multiple apps to try to replicate them in the realm of mobile, where Twitter is a native.

So Twitter are the company that has the slightly better chance of a steep growth, because of mobile and they know it and they are not afraid to show it. The lower-case-"t"-no-more team know their strategy well and they are even putting it on their logo. They are sure they are up to the challenge.

The question that time will answer is "Will Larry the Bird turn out to be a bold hero or a cocky teenager, who doesn't really know what he's doing any better than his retired-from-duty sibling with messier hair?" It is surely going to be interesting as long as the bird doesn't get to meet it's failure obsessed sea mammal friend on its quest (and yes, I'm talking about Mr. Fail Whale).

So let's see if my psychic "logo-reading" was actually any good or was I just seeing things.

I believe most of my predictions were right on the money and Twitter have changed the game they play significantly.

The biggest thing Twitter did was cutting off access to vital parts of its API pretty much destroying a lot of startups and companies that were dependent on their data. It's a very aggressive move that shows that Twitter whats to be the boss of its own house, keeping all the profits for themselves, which sounds like a very good business strategy. Let's not forget the strained relations between Twitter and Instagram (now owned by Facebook - wink wink).

But the important thing is - Twitter now has passed the 200 million monthly active users. Looks like the more aggressive (and more mature) strategy is actually paying off.