Part 1: Observation
Threadless.com
Threadless is a community-centered online apparel store that derives all of its T-shirt designs from members of its online community. Designers upload their T-shirt designs to the website where visitors and members of the community score them on a scale of 0 to 5. On average, around 700 designs will compete to be selected in any given week. The staff then selects the top six designs for that week. Each designer selected receives $2,000 in cash as well as either an additional $200 in cash or $500 in store credit.
Nevertheless, in mid-2006 Threadless expanded in a more traditional direction, adding shirts designed by selected artists to their store, which are not subject to the voting process, known as Threadless Select.
The shirts are run in limited batches. When shirts are sold out customers can request a reprint. However this only happens when there is enough demand and is ultimately up to Threadless. New shirts are released on Mondays.
• How are users filtered?
Users or members are not filtered, you can be part of the community as long as you have a design and want to be voted/ or win some money or you can be part of it just to score designs.
• How are connections made?
Connections are made simply by signing up and of course editing your profile.
A typical profile:
• How is it organized?
Organization is Great!!!
Triangulation between individuals and groups:
1) Score Designs
Basically here, designers are rated by those users who have a login name and are registered on the site.
So here, people who dont know each other are actually being graded by one another. And the winners fate depends on the judges panel who are actually the members of the site and not necessarily the admin.
2)Tee-rific Photos:
Members put up pictures of themselves in threadless T-shirts, and add them to the gallery. So eventually this gallery is of people who might not even know each other, but at the end of the day are part of the same social network. You also get store credit of $1.50 every time you upload a picture.
3) Blog Forum:
Members comment on each others work and exchange and share ideas, thoughts and opinions.
4) Street Team:
This is really interesting. Hence, it becomes more of a viral marketing technique, where the link is forwarded to people and eventually and they might not even know each other.
5) Threadspotting:
The members are given a chance to share images/videos according to the ‘Threadspotting’ theme.
So they might share material which is based on complete strangers. Ex. This one on You Tube
