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Twitter Tees: Twitter Launches Official Threadless T-Shirt Store
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Sure you can already get your favorite tweets as t-shirts from TWItoShirt or Twitshirt, but until today, Twitter has remained thread-free of endorsing services that promote your tweets in wearable form.
In an interesting move, however, Twitter has officially partnered with Threadless to launch Twitter Tees by Threadless, the Twitter t-shirt store for crowdsourced Twitter tees.
What is Twitter Tees by Threadless?
Twitter Tees by Threadless works in a similar fashion to their standard approach to community-based t-shirt creation, but with a few fun Twitter twists. First you can log in using your Twitter account. Plus, instead of designers submitting their ideas, anyone can submit a public tweet (ie. not protected), whether it be their own or just one they happen to love, for consideration to be made into a t-shirt.
Users then vote on their favorite tweet submissions, and each week the two tweets with the most votes will get paired with an official and original Threadless design and printed for sale.
As is typical with Threadless, the users who helped produce the t-shirt will get a cut of the action. So, should the quoted Twitterer approve their pithy words for publication in t-shirt fashion, they’ll get $360 in cash and $140 in Threadless gift certificate credit. Plus, the original nominating Twitterer will cash in with a cool $100 in cash and $40 in gift certificate moola.
Four tweet inspired designs are currently available for purchase at $18/shirt. You can buy now or start submitting and voting on the tweets you want to see on your back in next week’s roundup.
Is a Twitter Business Model Afoot?
That’s great and all, but you’re probably wondering if Twitter gets a piece of the t-shirt pie. There’s no official word on that, but we have reason to believe they might be. Threadless CEO Thomas Ryan told us, “I’m sorry, but I can’t discuss financial arrangements between Threadless and other companies.” But, he also disclosed that, “Biz initially approached us in January about Twitter’s interest in having us help them with their logo tees.”
At the rate Twitter is growing, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Twitter/Threadless partnership proved fruitful for both parties.
Game Over for the Competition?
Ryan also asserts that Twitter Tees by Threadless has a huge advantage over the competition. “We’re doing something quite different,” he said. “On Twitter Tees by Threadless, it’s the Threadless crowdsourced model. Anyone can submit, but only the best, highest voted submissions get printed. It’s not the mass customization model where anyone can print one of anything. Not only do we feel our model is more exciting and engaging to the the community, but the the product is of higher quality.”
We believe today’s news to be a big boon for both Threadless and Twitter, albeit a bit of a depressant for the other guys. I’m lucky enough to be a proud owner of the “I’m Huge on Twitter” tee, and the t-shirt pretty much rocks. The only thing that would make me even happier would be to wear my own tweet in crowdsourced t-shirt form, which isn’t a complete pipe dream given that I’m off submitting my very own tweets as I type.
See any Twitter Tees you have to own? Have a tweet in mind you’d like to submit? Want us to vote for your tweets? Share your thoughts and Twitter Tees ideas in the comments.
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Those are actually quite cool. be grabbing myself one of those badboys ASAP!
hahah Fun idea! Let's see what happens with it :D
Some of these t-shirts are really funny. But EVERYONE is going to get one and that’ll make it not funny because you’ll be the guy at the party wearing the same twitter t-shirt as six other folks.
yea, that's why we're printing limited quantities and new ones every week! :)
At first look I thought this was a huge copyright violation because you stated “Plus, instead of designers submitting their ideas, anyone can submit a public tweet (ie. not protected), whether it be their own or just one they happen to love, for consideration to be made into a t-shirt.” But tweets are copyright protected. (See TOS)
Upon investigation, I see Twitter has done an excellent job at providing a cool service while ensuring and protecting copyright. Tweet owners are compensated for printed tweets and can opt to decline a tweet-for-shirt nomination. (KUDOS to you, Twitter!)
So, your statement must mean that tweets from protected Twitter accounts cannot be nominated. Gotcha.
For those who make their living off shirt slogans, this looks like another market to add to the list. Thanks for blogging about it.
Since it is Tuesday, I HAVE to see a “#traveltuesday” shirt. Come on, who doesn’t want to explore the world in one of those bad boys?
Katy Lynch
Community Manager | Where I’ve Been
katy@whereivebeen.com
awful! Are those slogans all they could come up with?!
I think you’re missing the point…those are tweets created by actual twitterers…these are just the first four selected to be made in to t-shirts. But in the future users vote on their favorite tweets so it’s all based on what the community wants.
I think this is a great idea. I’m working on launching a similar idea, blackshirtwhitetext.com, and the demo shirts have been getting a very good response.
Another Twitter shirt idea: http://twirts.com
smart way to capitalize on Twitter’s popularity and the pithy comments tweeters make. let’s hope the spammer hackers don’t find a way to rig the vote…
I’ll put it next to my GeoCities T-shirt.
My Follower’s are BIGGER than your Follower’s
I have 3 ideas for T-Shirt. (1) Tweet-Toe Through the Tulips (2) Somewhere Over the Tweetbow
(3) Tweetlle, Tweetle Little Star
nice pick up.
“How tweet it is”
T-riffic!
“Tweet, follow, or get out of the way. #Twitter” http://twitter.com/cvnow/status/1849629923
It’s pretty fun/cool idea. Threadless has been very creative in the way the approach sales.
I posted one here: http://bit.ly/eatbrains
Link to yours so we can vote
A great way to get Tweets to adopt my term WTPho instead of WTF! Kids shouldn’t see T-shirts with profanities on them, either direct or unintentional! Mahalo!!
Thanks for the article. I immediately felt the urge to throw some money at Threadless & bought the “I’m huge on Twitter” Tee. (not huge yet, in the works though). Just having too much fun…
I want one!
I’ll be curious to see which tweets get the most votes. If you look at the ajax response from the voting script, it looks as though the id of each slogan is incorrectly applied, and consistently applies the vote to the next slogan in the list.
Gonna order some…
Other than threadless, there are even few more sites offering such service.
You may check some here
http://www.blogpandit.com/2009/07/top-sites-for-twitter-tshirts-and.html
LOVE IT! I’m sooo making my own Twitter shirt! Lol
Right, so if your Twitter account is protected, your tweets cannot be considered for submission. Also, should your tweet get submitted, Threadless will verify that they have your approval to move forward. Though I’m sure most of us would be delighted to see our tweets in t-shirt form (and earn a little cash in the process).
The relationship of Tweets and copyright is surely interesting. I’ll be looking at the TOS for more information. How do other Twitter t-shirt manufacturers go about complying with the TOS, since Threadless is the one company that’s directly affiliated with Twitter (officially official, that is).
Alex from http://TechNestReport.com – a blog, podcast, and TV channel that covers the tech industry from head to toe!
Actually if you just start using the site, you’ll notice that you can set your preferences right away. So you can either white list all your tweets, black list all of them (ie. keep them from being published as tees), or have the option to approve in one off situations. It’s a smart approach in my opinion, since the users control whether or not their tweets end up as tees.
Right! That’s a great feature.
What I meant was more along the lines of if another t-shirt site wanted to do the same – print Tweets as slogans on a shirt: how would they go about doing that + the TOS?
PS: I couldn’t find a way to respond to your post, Jennifer, so sorry for not following netiquette :)
hey – the ajax response is the next slogan to vote on – the votes are applied to the correct tweet…
Forgot about that. Just put in my order. :-)