What I have learned from Twitter Tees

There is a lot to learn about Twitter Tees by Threadless (hat tip to Howard Lindzon). It is a powerful (and rare) example of how social media can go beyond communication and reshape production and consumption. Twitte Tees does it beautifully and elegantly.

Here are a couple of quick thoughts of what I have learned from it so far:

Fully leverage on the new medium
Twitter Tees isn't about fanciful grahpics. It is about witty text. They have widely exploit the medium for what it is. That is thoughtful and smart.

Let the cream rises to the top
The normal tweets lacks the mechanisms for the cream to rise to the top. Twitter Tees, by simply adding a voting mechanism, allows the community to decide what is the best tagline for a T-shirt. This filtering mechanism is the key to unlocking viral feedback so that only the coolest stuff are being surfaced.

Microblogging can affect consumption and production
When we talked about micro blogging, we typically focused on the conversational aspect of the service. Twitter Tee has shown us that it has the capacity to do so much more, like affecting how production and consumption. By coordinating user preferences, Twitter Tees can now produce the best stuff that the community desires.

Opportunities in other industries
There are still other industries to apply this model. Take greeting cards for example. Why not create cards with witty comments that are created and nominated by the community?

In summary, I am really impressed by what the Threadless guys did. Once again, they have shown true understanding of next generational businesses.

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