Welcome to Twitshirt.

May 04, 2009

Hello again! This is, well, our second first day on the Internet superpipeway. We had a fantastic launch wherein we sold a handful of shirts and, more importantly, received a lot of really great feedback. The feedback came so quickly that we shut the site down short of 24 hours in operation and went to work on making some necessary changes. A few weeks later and we’re back, and we’re very happy with the results. Hopefully you are, too.

Opt-in. As of today, Twitshirt is now opt-in only. If you like Twitshirt and want to make some extra money on the side, you now need to give us authorization before your words will ever be immortalized on fine fabric. For those who would prefer their genius not appear as a fashion item, sit back and relax: we’ve got your back, uh, so to speak. Only Twitter posts from users who have opted-in are available to be Twitshirted. And opted-in users can, well, opt-out anytime on our website.
Twitter interface. Additionally, we have wired our service to respond to messages sent to Twitshirt via your favorite Twitter application. To opt-in simply send the message “@twitshirt #opt-in”, wait for 10 to 15 minutes, and you’ll be added to the list.
OAuth. Twitshirt now uses Twitter’s OAuth for authentication. This means Twitshirt can verify you as the owner of a Twitter account without asking for your Twitter password.
Improved royalties. We’ve also increased the royalty payment to 5% of the total sale, from $0.50USD. This is twice as much as we had previously allocated and, in hindsight, should have been the amount from the get-go. However, the payment schedule is still the same, as we have to allow time to account for possible product returns.
Promote your Twitshirts! Finally, there are now two ways to promote your t-shirts. After you have opted-in people can find a list of your last ten tweets by going to www.twitshirt.com/YOURTWITTERNAME. Even better, Twitshirt product pages are now given a permalink, allowing you to send a direct link to your friends, family, and/or Twitter followers.

Ta-da!

Thanks to all of those people who provided kind and useful feedback over the last few weeks, your suggestions were appreciated. That type of feedback is always welcome and encouraged. You can bet that we’ll continue to make improvements, as we want to make Twitshirt as much fun as it can be.

Thanks for your patience, it’s good to be back online.