How to Launch a Twitter Business – Threadless

Posted by Howard
on May 24th, 2009

I am seriously impressed by the Threadless launch of Twitter Tees . I only know @jeffrey from the Threadless crew, but he is wicked smart.

I love watching amazing management and businesses launch because it inspires me to do better and rethink ideas I have myself. My friend Mo sums up the Threadless launch best:

1) Crowd-sourcing – Threadless is smartly leveraging their crowd-sourcing expertise across the expanded Twitter network, using Twitter to surface and gather votes on shirts and thereby greatly expanding their reach and viral spread. And using the 140 character meme as an initial anchor is perfect for t-shirts.

2) Own your Vertical — Threadless is staking an early claim to their retail vertical on Twitter. I would expect them to expand their use of Twitter for surfacing and creating all kinds of offerings over time, deepening their presence on the platform. Similarly, there are a number of other interesting categories where Twitter can play an extremely important role, including local and travel as two big ones. Early movers here will have a tremendous advantage.

3) Twitter Press — Threadless also very smartly used Twitter as the vehicle for announcing and promoting the new initiative. Staying within the medium and using it’s inherent viral capacity is spot on.

While the nerds and media rejoice in each day that Twitter fails to announce a business model, you should rejoice in the platform they have sprung on the world and get to work.

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