Crowdsourcing, Threadless and Web2.0

[Michael Levin]

Threadless on WGN - Around Town from Threadless.com on Vimeo.

You've no doubt heard the term crowdsourcing. Jeff Howe popularized the word in this Wired article and with his book, "Crowdsourcing".

What is crowdsourcing? It's all about letting a group of people create, vote and manage the action on something. The web is the most common crowdsourcing vehicle.

"Threadless is a T-Shirt company that uses crowdsourcing as its main vehicle to run its business. Join the Threadless community and submit your T-Shirt content or vote on stuff people have submitted in the past 7 days. The top picks win big $ (like, $2,200) and their designs become part of the Threadless collection offered for sale. Here's how Threadless describes themselves:
"The story of an awesome company: We're a Chicago-based company that creates online communities. Our popular website Threadless made us true "crowdsourcing" pioneers - it combines an online art community with a highly successful e-commerce business model. Threadless invites anyone in the world with an idea for a t-shirt design to submit artwork, which is voted on through our community of over 1 million registered users. Each week the company prints and sells the highest-scoring t-shirt designs and rewards community members thousands of dollars for their designs, slogans and reprinted favorites. Founded in 2000 and driven by a super creative and fun-loving entrepreneurial team, skinnyCorp has grown rapidly and was recently named "the most innovative small company in America" by Inc. Magazine."


My favorite design is Communist Party:

Submit a photo of a Threadless T-Shirt being worn and win again:

The variations on this community theme are endlessly fun and cool. Congrats to you, slick reader, for being part of this community and "getting it". Cuz, just be being here on CodeTown and reading this, you show you grok the virtual community thing. What could be better than reading this captivating content? Create your own.

Check out Current dot com, who say "submit something!"

And, combine your virtual gigging with some in-person appearances. Cause, that's what it's all about, bud. The chi you get from being social.

If you have a favorite community or feature, please post it as a comment here. And, have a happy 4th of July!