What is Twitter Tees by Threadless?

Threadless is bringing its crowdsourcing expertise to Twitter with the launch of Twitter Tees by Threadless at twitter.threadless.com. Twitter Tees will feature notable Tweets submitted and voted on by Twitter users, with art direction and design of each t-shirt by the in-house creative team at Threadless.

For the launch, Threadless has selected four notable Twitter-themed Tweets to launch the site. These shirts are shipping today.

• “I’m huge on Twitter” by @xenijardin, co-editor of Boing Boing, excerpted from her longer Tweet: “An idea that emerged today w the BB video crew over quesadillas: ironic, self-referential hipster t-shirts that read *I'M HUGE ON TWITTER*”
  • original link: http://twitter.com/xenijardin/status/1154079410
• “140 is the new 420” by @mutgoff of Twitter
  • original link: http://twitter.com/mutgoff/status/1378223730
• “In space no one can hear you Tweet” by @LouisTrapani, New Media Producer, Publisher and Host of Doctor Who: Podshock
  • original link: http://twitter.com/LouisTrapani/status/1495850837
• “It's the messaging system that we didn’t know we needed until we had it” by @Biz, co-founder of Twitter. So, Biz said this but he hasn’t actually Tweeted it. Yet. (Biz?!!!)

Anyone can submit a Tweet for inclusion. Twitter users will vote on submitted Tweets, with two new Twitter Tees selected and printed each week. They are likely to be as diverse and varied as the conversations happening all day on Twitter.

How does Twitter Tees work?

Threadless is now accepting Tweets at twitter.threadless.com a new site where users can log in using their Twitter credentials. Users can access their own Tweets and submit them for consideration. They can also access their friends' Tweets and favorite Tweets to nominate them for consideration. Users can also vote on any Tweets submitted to determine if they are worthy of being printed as a weekly Twitter Tee.

Threadless respects Twitter users' ownership of their Tweets. All Twitter users whose Tweets are nominated for a Twitter Tee will be notified via Twitter and asked to approve the nomination before the Tweet is published to the audience for voting. Nominees have the option of refusing all nominations, accepting all or selecting which to allow on a case-by-case basis. Tweets by users with their accounts “protected” will be ineligible for nomination.

Twitter users whose Tweets are selected for printing will receive $500 ($360 in cash and a $140 Threadless gift certificate). In addition, the first nominator of a printed Tweet will receive $140 ($100 cash and a $40 Threadless gift certificate).

So, “crowdsourced” t-shirts?

Threadless pioneered crowdsourced t-shirt design. Every day hundreds of designers submit t-shirt designs to Threadless.com where approved designs are voted on by thousands of community members. Since 2005, Threadless has also crowdsourced slogans for Type Tees and has received well over one million submissions. Threadless actively shares control of our brand with our community every day.

Twitter Tees brings community-powered t-shirt design to Twitter. It harnesses the creative energy and real-time wit of Twitter's passionate audience and focuses it on a rewarding challenge to create the best Twitter apparel.

What is Twitter Tees NOT?

It’s not one-off printing of Tweets, simply printed as text on a shirt, without leading art direction and world-class t-shirt design. The Tweets collectively selected by Twitter users are sure to be fun, irreverent and emblematic of Twitter and its base of passionate users.

Why a Tweetable press release?

In a very short time, Twitter has changed personal and even business communication. We wanted to highlight this change by launching the site with a Tweetable press release. It was certainly an exercise in pithiness! But the key points are there, with supporting info here.

We at Threadless are learning constantly just how much the social web is reshaping public relations, marketing, and the customer relationship. Each day we speak with our nearly 500,000 followers on Twitter, and it has become a key vehicle to further engage our community when they are not on our website. Brands like Twitter and Threadless demonstrate how to activate a massive fan base through open sharing rather than controlled release. On Threadless and now on Twitter Tees, there is complete transparency into the design selection process. We thought we’d run with that for the launch too.

But really, what do we think about this?

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter

"I've been a huge fan of Threadless for years. I'm thrilled that Threadless is tapping into our platform to bring crowdsourced tees to our millions of users. It’s awesome! The first four tees are incredible and I can't wait to see which Tweets our users will vote onto future t-shirts."

Jake Nickell, founder and CSO of Threadless

"Biz and Ev invited Threadless to visit the Twitter offices in San Francisco in February. We got talking about how cool it would be to enable Twitter users to nominate and vote on Twitter t-shirts, and our developers dove right in to figure out how to tie everything we know about crowdsourcing to Twitter's community via their API. The site we've created is integrated with Twitter accounts. In a matter of a click or two, a Twitter user can link her account up and submit her own Tweets or nominate others. It's a fun and very natural extension of what Twitter users like best about the service."

Tom Ryan, CEO of Threadless

"Crowdsourcing is an incredibly powerful way to engage and grow a community. Since pioneering the trend in 2000, Threadless has built a large, vibrant, and creative community around art- and slogan-based t-shirts. We believe there is tremendous potential for Threadless to bring the power of crowdsourcing to other passionate communities. We are excited to have done just that today in launching Twitter Tees by Threadless.”

Can I talk to someone about this?

For press inquiries, please contact us at press@threadless.com or @threadless.