The shift would let Twitter limit censorship just in one country and not for its entire audience. The decision received criticism from some users because the service has been used as an agent of social change around the world, including places like the Middle East.

Twitter, like other major Internet companies such as Facebook, Google and Yahoo knows how to deal with a complex web of laws and state-imposed restrictions, which have the power to hush dissident voices and sway public opinion.

Some free-speech advocates defended Twitter, saying it was handing them tools to fight censorship. Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and a fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said she found herself in the unusual position of praising, not condemning, *Twitter*’s policies.

On the contrary, other groups accused Twitter of taking censors’ sides and demanded a change to this new policy. “Twitter is depriving cyber dissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organisation,” Reporters Without Borders, a journalist organisation, wrote in a letter to Dorsey, *Twitter*’s executive chairman.

Many businesses use an ideogram (sign, icon), an emblem (symbol) or a combination of sign and emblem as a logo. An effective logo may consist of both an ideogram and the company name (logotype), but symbols may be more effective for logos translated into many alphabets in increasingly globalised markets, because they can remain the same worldwide.

People recognise and react to colour, shapes, lines, fonts and other symbolic forms with different emotions on the basis of their experiences. Colours have a broad range of meaning according to different nations and cultures, as we have already blogged.

Let’s look at some interesting examples. The logo of Formula 1 has the number 1 in the space between the F and the red stripes, and it conveys an idea of speed.

Amazon’s logo doesn’t seem to hide much at first sight, but it is a symbol of the company’s philosophy. First of all, the yellow arrow looks like a smile, which means Amazon wants to have the best customer satisfaction. The arrow also connects the letters a and z, meaning that this store has everything from A to Z.

Sony Vaio is a well-known brand of laptops. The first two letters of *Vaio*’s logo represent the basic analogue signal. The last two letters look like a 1 and 0, representing the digital signal.

The arrow is a symbol of movement, and it suits to a logistics services company like FedEx. Have you ever notice any arrows in their logo? There is one. Where? You can find a white arrow between the E and X, in the background.