Wed 25 Jun 2008
Tom Limongello (@tlimongello), on behalf of @failwhale, @yiyinglu, and a whole bunch of New York City geek all-stars, sent a box full of failwhale t-shirts to the hard working folks over at TwitterHQ. Our reconnaissance (Summize.com) tells us that they have received them, and are not quite sure how to react. That seems fair. Just know that failwhale.com, and the efforts of the Fail Whale Fan Club are honest and sincere, and we wish the best for Twitter. We love the platform, we benefit from the community which it fosters, and we would be lost without it. We poke fun because we care! Fail Whale Cares!
Bellow is the letter that Tom wrote that should have arrived with the t-shirts:
Dear @_evan @airrun @al3x @alissa @benfu @biz @bs @crystal @ev @goldman @jack @jeremy @jkalucki @krissy @lane @meangrape @robey @stevej,
What am I doing? I wanted to send you all message expressing the support I’ve witnessed for Twitter since making my own FailWhale t-shirt. From watching your interview with Robert Scoble on Qik you mentioned you don’t need more money to keep twitter afloat, so we thought we’d send you these t-shirts to show our support as you figure out your approach to maintaining fewer outages. We would appreciate it if you would follow our efforts to make the FailWhale into a brand. We do not want to misrepresent the spirit of your brand and your efforts to make twitter more reliable, but we also want to participate. We as a group would hope that you could offer a nudge to your followers by acknowledging YiYing Lu @yiyinglu the designer of the FailWhale, originally titled “lifting up a dreamer” such that she could benefit from Twitter using her design to make cache failures into an endearing caché. Here is the link to the zazzle page with a preloaded image of the FailWhale where FailWhale fans can customize their own shirt with their handle and a slogan http://zazzle.com/failwhale…If one or more of you could tweet your thanks to her by including this link, or even better enabling a hyperlink on the Twitter / Over Capacity page to her personal website http://www.yiyinglu.com/sc/illustration I think that would show true solidarity.
FailWhale is quickly becoming a brand, and that is a very good thing. Twitter has proven that it does a great job of bridging the online world to the physical world, in fact it’s better than any service I’ve ever used. I wore my FailWhale t-shirt at Internet Week in NYC and that simple test returned an immediately favorable response. I wanted to help the FailWhale succeed as a symbol, even though what it represents has not been completely defined (also a good thing, because you can define this to benefit Twitter’s image as a service that supports all of its users). So I decided to make FailWhale t-shirts for FailWhale fans, most of whom were friends that I met on Twitter. I didn’t have the rights to the design, so I was going to keep the shirts to a small secret group of uberfans, but then I met Yiying Lu when @emmastory sent the iStockPhoto link to @failwhale and I’d like to make it bigger. And I am not alone.
Sean O’Steen, @seanosteen created his own designs, and the @failwhale profile with +350 with a mission to create a brand out of the FailWhale phenomenon. He also set up the FailWhale fan club http://groups.google.com/group/failwhalefanclub/ where new designs and expressions of love and support for the FailWhale will be managed.
Personally, I’ve met many people through Twitter starting at SXSW 2008 and here in NYC. I have been able to stay connected to people in different time zones, especially China where I lived on and off from 1998-2003, more effectively with Twitter than with any other social networking service, including skype, facebook, friendster, linkedin, chat, email or telephone. It is my pleasure to show our support, and we all hope you enjoy the t-shirts as much as we do.
Thank you Twitter!
@yiyinglu, @seanosteen, @failwhale, @davidherrold, @fredericguarino,
@robertmurray, @alanataylor, @sanford, @whitneyhess, @gaeyia, @nicolejordan
@tonybgoode, @chrissieb, @truebluetitan, @mknell, @rebeccaforever
Posted by admin under Announcements
Here was Evan Williams response to the t-shirts:
http://twitter.com/ev/statuses/843506119
[...] With respect to celebrating downtime here is a link to the Fail Whale Fan Club (”Celebrating Twitter and our favorite error page cetacean”), funnily enough it seems it was started by someone I follow, Sean O’Steen. I love the fact Tom Limongello sent the Twitter team t-shirts! [...]
@tlimongello did a very nice thing for YiYing Lu. I will wear my FailWhale t-shirt with pride.
And keep my fingers crossed that Michael Arrington was right, and Twitter will be as ubiquitous as email one day.
aaah, the smell of transparency in the morning.
I love it, just as much as I’ve come to love the failwhale…
find a failwhale, click reload, and see the triumph of hope over experience…
Great to know who made the art: I guess Yiying Lu is going to receive a %age of any profit?
of course they are, Yiying Lu made the store
How do I join the club? I want a shirt!
And…i want a FailWhale badge for my site.
Can we get a FailWhale credit card?
I so want to drop some FailWhale plastic when I’m shopping at Marshalls.
According to istockphoto (where the graphic is from originally), you can’t sell that art — just an FYI.
From istock’s legal terms, “For example, you cannot superficially modify the Content, print it on a t-shirt, mug, poster, template or other item, and sell it to others for consumption, reproduction or re-sale.”
Thank you Martin. Actually the copyright holder, Yiying Lu, the original illustrator, deactivated the image from iStockPhoto and is selling the related clothing in a separate store. The Fail Whale Fan Club is not connected with that store; with the exception that we are her biggest fans and we’re helping to promote it.