Twitshirt launched yesterday (16 April 2009) and provide a service that I’m sure many people would/will give their patronage to: The printing of individual tweets on t-shirts, on-demand. Since the t-shirt is the defining medium of this generation, and vanity publishing is in full vogue, it only makes sense that a business model which combines the two could succeed, and handily. They kinda fucked it up, though.
The problem: Twitshirt did not ask permission to sell the words of the authors of the tweets they printed. The author could opt-out, but that is at best a poor solution. It, without question, should be opt-in.
Today Twitshirt.com is down with a message saying, “We’ve heard your feedback-thank you. We’re reversing the polarity.”
Admitting one is wrong is not an easy thing to do, especially in public. Hopefully a relaunched Twitshirt will do what it should’ve in the first place: ask.