[iamaelephant]

I personally don't like the logo, but is it really fair to say Instagram and Uber "messed up big"? Because they're both wildly successful companies with highly recognised brands. Maybe the way you and I have been taught to think about logos and branding is.... wrong?

[jonathankoren]

Instagram is a shrug. Uber's 2016 change was a clusterfuck.

Uber went from a stylized Ü to the Chase Bank logo [0], as part of a grand brand strategy that fractured regular polygons that somehow supposed to make you think that they weren't just cab service. (Seriously, they called their 2016 suite of logos "Bits and Atoms" [1].) People literally lost the app on their phone. If it wasn't a mistake, they wouldn't have changed their logo to simply the word "Uber" in less than 2 years if it wasn't seen as a mistake.

[0] http://fortune.com/2016/02/11/uber-new-logo-jpmorgan/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx1-im6i8uk

[fugazithehaxoar]

Yes, we do think about them differently. Uber and Instagram are wildly successful but not ubiquitous. The ultimate test is "will grandma use it?"

Grandmas use Google, Facebook and Amazon but generally have not adopted Uber or Instagram yet. Winning over those kinds of customers requires a different GTM strategy and different marketing than your first couple million.