Web originals

I was reading Jason Kottke's blog last week and came across this post about the original Twitt(e)r branding. The post mentioned a few other early versions of famous websites, which I decided to seek out and collect in one place. You can see the full collection here.

Appropriately enough, I tweeted about the collection and watched as it 'went viral' – with over 100 retweets and 6,200-odd views of the page so far.

I think it's because people like stories of origins and unlikely beginnings. It's fascinating how so many great brands didn't get where they are because of great branding. Google started out like this!

And this was their first ever Google Doodle!

It's notable how Google subsequently dropped its exclamation mark, but Yahoo only gained it later:

Amazon was another early fan of the exclamation mark!

It's a salutary lesson for brand people everywhere that neither the logo nor the strapline (Earth's biggest bookstore) played the slightest role in Amazon's subsequent success – both were dropped long ago.

You can see some more here, including the BBC, Tumblr, Myspace, Linkedin and thefacebook.

Comments

[Brad @aplus]

Omg thanks for this post, it brought back a sense of nostalgia for the years when these websites were just starting up and so different from what we know of today. One can see just how much the designs of the websites and the branding have improved drastically over the years, and when you think of it, not many years have passed. It also makes you wonder what we will be saying in 10-15 years' time about this day's websites. Will Twitter and Facebook and Google and the like be the same? Will there be some notable new additions to the list? Things are developing so fast and sometimes it makes sense to look back down the road from where we left off. Excellent post, no wonder it went viral!

[website design in preston]

I go through the collection, I want to add new one but don't know how to do.

Thanks
Saif

[mini site ninja]

thanks for sharing