You’ve got tons of Facebook and Twitter friends? Probably more than you need. What if I told you that you could actually turn those virtual friends into something tangible? Well you can with WearingSocial. WearingSocial taps into the API’s of both Twitter and Facebook and allows you to create mosaic themed T-Shirts with the profile pics of your friends.
I tested it out with Facebook (the preview images below were generated using my Facebook account -- can you spot Andy from Hide Your Arms?) and I have to say that process is very simple. It’s very similar to using a 3rd party app with Facebook, you’ll need to grant WearingSocial permission to your Facebook account before it is able to grab your friends’ profile photos. From there it’s just a matter of choosing your T-Shirt design and WearingSocial does the rest.
WearingSocial is actually quite neat, especially if you’re into social media. The WearingSocial T-Shirts are priced at $19.99.
Shirt Status proclaims that you should turn your Facebook status into an actual T-Shirt. Not an entirely new concept, but it is interesting in that they offer a semi-easy way for you to do this without you needing to tinker too much in a graphics program. Basically, they start you off with a default Facebook status laid on top of basic template design, akin to the Facebook status thought bubble. What’s neat is that you can change the status to whatever you like and they’ll print it for you … errr, Spreadshirt will print it for you.
Interesting concept, but, there are some flaws, in my opinion. First of all, they use Spreadshirt, which means YOU (without the help of Shirt Status) could easily design your own T-Shirt in a similar style, even if you’re not a Photoshop guru. Secondly, if you did do it yourself via Spreadshirt then you would probably pay less because you’re making it for yourself and won’t need to mark it up for profit (unless of course you’d like to charge yourself more than you’d like, then by all means go ahead). Finally, if you did do it yourself then the you won’t be stuck with the Shirt Status logo on the shirt (making it a bit more Facebook-ish).
So if you’re in the market for a Facebook status themed T-Shirt then I’d say 1. Use Shirt Status if you’re lazy and just want your product as quickly and as easily as possible, and 2. Don’t use Shirt Status if you think you can design your own status graphic (easy) and would like a cleaner look.
Shirt Status T-Shirts are available now for $19.95.
Are you a social media guru? Are you on Facebook 24/7 connecting with everyone humanly possible? Have you leveraged Twitter for all that it is worth? If so, then the following list of 101 T-Shirts for Social Media Gurus, Facebook Fanatics and Twitter Addicts may be of interest to you. At the very least, it will help you prepare your wardrobe for the next über geeky social media or tech heavy conference, because we all know that wherever the geeks go, so do the geeky T-Shirts.
I’d love to hear which one of these are your favorites and whether or not you own any of these tees! And if you know of a Social Media related shirt not on this list then please tell me about it. Leave a comment below in the comments section and let me know!
If you enjoyed this post then please, please, please, tell you’re friends about it! A simple Tweet or post on your Facebook page will help to get the word out, and a link back on your blog would be greatly appreciated!
If you stumbled on this blog via Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere then welcome! Please feel free to peruse the site and if you like what you see then I’d recommend adding Co-Tee TV as a friend on Facebook so that you can stay up-to-date on future posts!
When I first joined Facebook I felt as if I was part of the cool culture of educated geeks who seemed to agree with my sentiments that the bigger and more established Myspace sucked ass. When I first signed up for Facebook, I was happy to see that the little teeny boppers were gone, as were the annoying background flashing GIF’s. There was no music that instantly streamed every time you loaded a new page – thank goodness! The Facebook interface was clean, easy on the eyes and a pleasure to navigate. You needed a .edu email address to register. There was a time when Facebook felt exclusive.
Those days are gone.
NerdyShirts sums things up succinctly by characterizing Facebook as Cultbook. With 400 million users and growing, including those teeny boppers that I so happily left behind when I abandoned Myspace, Facebook is turning into the modern day MySpace. Facebook is no longer exclusive. Facebook is Cultbook, 400 million users strong and growing.
The newest tee from the Chop Shop is pretty killer. Instead of a design comprised of 50 or so silhouettes, they have a design that features 19 funny, mock coupons! If you’re a tech nerd or web geek, you’ll find at least one coupon here that will tickle your funny bone.
The Chop Shop is offering the aptly named The Coupon Tee in 5 different colors (Eggplant, Silver, Cranberry, Orange, White). The shirt is available now for sale for $20 ($2 Â extra for American Apparel tees).
“19 various coupons for tech nerds and web enthusiasts. Special offers not seen on any other t-shirts anywhere! They range from 30% the droids you are looking for to 50% off any 1 ring of power in either styles for men or dwarves. Other offers will get your mom off Facebook and make it so that someone sees one of your tweets. Order it now and start taking advantage of all the glorious offers!”
Disclaimer: Not all offers valid and cutting coupons out of shirt will render shirt full of holes.
Facebook has pretty much become ubiquitous with having any type of presence on the web. If you’re a brand, have a website or sell stuff on the web then you probably have a Facebook Fan Page. Indie brand A Little Bit Weird has decided to use their Facebook page as something more than a dumping spot for their media. They have opened up a storefront on the fan page to compliment their main online shop.
I really think this is a great idea. I don’t think that I’ve seen any other indie brands selling their tees directly from within Facebook so this is quite a refreshing move by A Little Bit Weird. Go ahead and check out their page, below you’ll see two of my favorites from their shop, Father Time and Guys Bear, both of which are available for $24.
My sentiments, exactly! And that’s is why I’ve hidden Facebook apps from my Facebook news feed. Do those Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc. notifications annoy you on Facebook? Just hover over one of those updates in your News Feed and click on the “Hide” option that appears to the right. Choose to hide those notifications from your feed and you won’t have to worry about them ever again!
However, according to this article from Mashable, we might not have to worry about Facebook app notifications any more. They supposedly said goodbye to the practice today. However, the article does mention that the notifications will shift to email notifications – which is just as bad in my opinion (but tolerable thanks to Gmail’s filter feature)!
Our friends over at Dos Chicos Tees has a pretty sweet Valentine’s Day Sale going on right now. For every T-Shirt you buy you get one free – so that means you get to have a funny Dos Chicos tee and so does your sweetheart! The T-Shirts are priced at $17 (not too shabby considering you’ll be getting two tees). The sale runs from this Saturday until Sunday so you better jump on this deal fast if you see a tee (or two) that you like.
My favorites include Add As A Friend and America’s Most Tweeted because I am a Facebook and Twitter addict (duh!). The Meth T-Shirt caught my eye if only because I do research on people who are addicted to methamphetamine (they are an interesting bunch).
With the release of Google Buzz, our favorite 4-colored search engine has spoken and they have declared that they want it all. Google has declared that they want to have world domination. Google Buzz looks to destroy both Twitter and Facebook all at once swoop. And with Buzz being built into Gmail and it’s user base of nearly a gazillion people – it has a strong chance of doing just that.
If you feel like showing some Google support and love then check out I’m Feeling Like World Domination in the FAIL Shirt Shop. It comes printed on a white American Apparel tee and is available now for $23.99.
1. “If you can’t mobilize your followers for feedback, links, retweets or an opinion: they’re worthless.”
This is somewhat true. When I first started blogging about a year and a half ago I used my existing Twitter account to send out links to posts that I’d do on this blog. For the first month or so I received minimal feedback or retweets.
I was following a ton of T-Shirt people and yet no one seemed to care about my content. The main thing that I learned is that Twitter is a two way street. Unless YOU care about the people that YOU follow on Twitter then YOU are worthless to THEM.
Once I started providing my opinions to tweets I’d read over Twitter, leaving feedback and retweeting I started to notice that people would do the same for the content that I pumped out over Twitter.
Twitter is a two way interactive street. Provide worth to your followers and the people that follow you will be worth their weight in gold 100 times over.
2. “Twitter is a vehicle for word of mouth, but offline word of mouth is always better than online word of mouth.”
I disagree. I don’t think my blog would have grown as much as it did and as fast as it did without the online word of mouth gained through the use of Twitter. Had I not utilized Twitter, my blog might just be another blog. Instead, I have a strong following of people who love T-Shirts and enjoy visiting my site to get the latest tee related scoops.
In fact, I made it a point not to SPAM my Facebook friends (people that I actually know in real life) with status updates linking back to my blog. I didn’t even announce my blog on my Facebook profile despite the fact that my 300-400 Facebook friends would have seen it. I wanted to see how much the blog would grow minus the friend and family factor. Other people automate updates on their blog to their personal Facebook page. I don’t do this and I will explain in a future post why I don’t.
Coty’s Followers/Following Rule
I started to follow the “big” people in my niche (T-Shirts) and I’d take a look at the people that they followed and I would selectively follow those that I thought had an interest in tees.
Note that I don’t have a monstrous or unbalanced followers/following count. I follow about 1800 people and have about 1100 followers. A balance in the number of people you follow and the number that follow you (followers) is a good thing. It means that more times than not, when you followed someone they followed you back. Or, when someone followed you, you found their content interesting enough to follow them back.
Remember, Twitter is a two way interactive street. So be weary of people whose follow/follower count are not balanced (i.e. they follow 300,000 people but have 23 followers). These are probably SPAM accounts, don’t follow these people. I’m a little follow heavy when it comes to Twitter, when you encounter these types of people you need to take into account their tweet history and even the link they provide on their profile page (covered in next section). When it comes to the followers/following rule you really want to be aware of the extremes, for instance:
How To Choose Who To Follow?
Once you start using Twitter you’ll start to get people who follow you that you aren’t currently following. You can do one of two things:
1. Ignore the Twitter email notifying you of a new follower.
or
2. Click on the notification email and review the stats of the person following you.
Ignoring people over Twitter is a bad idea. Twitter is a two way interactive street, remember?
Therefore that leaves us with option #2. So you take a look at the user stats that is included in the notification email and then from there you can make a “trim the fat” decision. This when you use the Followers/Following rule: If they have an unbalanced Twitter Followers/Following count I usually ignore them and do not follow them back. They are probably SPAM.
If however, they have a balanced Twitter Followers/Following count OR they have a username related to my niche then I’ll take look at their Twitter profile.
For example, @Timothyfree decided to follow me on Twitter. I took a look at the notification email and he passed the Followers/Following Rule. Next step is to take a look at his Twitter profile page.
So now I am taking a look at their Twitter profile and at this point I need to decide to follow him on Twitter or not. My decision of whether to follow or not to follow hinges on a few things:
Are they following other people in my niche? Go through and look at the people they are following.
Do they’ve have an interesting profile link (bonus if they link back to a tee related site), or
Does their Tweet history show relevance to my niche?
So continuing on with @Timothyfree’s profile, I notice that he is linked to Freedom Clothing. Perfect, another clothing company to keep under my radar. But I do notice that his followers/following numbers have changed from when he initially followed me. That’s fine because I checked out his profile links, his tweet history and I know he is not SPAM, instead, he is someone that I’d  be interested in connecting with on Twitter. His tweet history shows that he likes to tweet about personal life stuff but that’s okay because when I looked through the list people he follow I found the official Twitter account for his clothing brand and I decided to follow that.
Once I review these three things I make a gut decision as to whether or not I follow this new person. I decide to follow @Timothyfree.
If you follow these steps then I promise you that you will develop a community of Twitter followers that actually care about what you are talking about. And once this happens, online word of mouth becomes a gazillion times more powerful then offline word of mouth. This is all based on the quality of your online word of mouth reach. And remember, since Twitter is a two way interactive street and you’re interacting with your community, your community members will be much more likely to retweet your content and/or provide feedback. Once this starts to happen on a regular basis then that’s when the online Twitter world becomes your oyster. Eat it up.
Some take home points:
Twitter is a two way interactive street.
Remember the Follow/Foller Rule and be weary of people whose follow/follower count are not balanced.
Trim The Fat, but don’t ignore new followers, see what they have to offer before you decide to follow or not follow them.
Once you’ve built a quality number of Twitter followers, don’t forget to continue to provide good content and leave good feedback.
I’d love to know what you think of this post. Also, if you have a different strategy for following people I’d love to hear about it!
