Twitshirt is a False Start With Lots of Potential

You might not think a lot of wit can be stuffed into 140 characters, but most of the people I follow on Twitter inject a fair amount of humor into their updates. Some of them post clever jokes almost exclusively. As a medium for comedy, Twitter forces writers to use the bare minimum of setup for their punchlines. These little nuggets of humor may fall flat sometimes, but when they’re good, they’re really good. It’s not unlike writing for greeting cards or t-shirts.

That’s why it’s not surprising to see companies trying to tap into that comedy goldmine to create physical products. The latest to launch is Twitshirt. Now, they’ve since unlaunched, so let me explain the idea and what happened yesterday to make them reconsider their business plan.

When Twitshirt launched, they offered to print any tweet on a t-shirt for $20. For each shirt sold, $0.50 would be set aside for the author. To claim your royalties you had to log in with your Twitter password. If you didn’t want your tweets used you could log in and opt-out.

To be fair, Airbag Industries, the company behind Twitshirt, was trying to do right by Twitterers by offering royalties and an opt-out option. But many, including myself, felt opt-out was the wrong model. Tweets are copyrightable, and that’s just not how copyright works. An opt-in system is the only way to be sure you have permission to reuse someone’s tweets. It didn’t help that, whether you wanted to opt-out or not, you had to give them your Twitter password.

As you can see on their site now, Twitshirt has heard the community’s complaints and are “reversing the polarity.” Such a quick turnaround shows they’re paying attention and want to be real partners with the community. I look forward to seeing the changes they make, and even buying a shirt or two from my favorite Twitterers.

What do you think of Twitshirt and their business model? Let us know in the comments.

Copyright © 2009 Blogging Tips

Related Articles

• Bill Gates weighs in
• IT Predictions for 2010
• Always social with INQ Chat 3G
• Costly babble of social networking chatter
• Microsoft started officially using Twitter