You thought that CNN was all about news and advertising, right? Wrong! They’re also about selling T-shirts.

Problem is, a lot of these shirts make no sense at all. They’re random headlines ("Obama Mania Reaches Thailand"), multiple takes on the same story (three headlines about the redneck Stonehenge?) or, like this one, sort of indecipherable: "Medals mix Olympic, Chinese tradtions." What’s with the typo? Is that part of the joke? If so, what’s the joke?

Actually, it looks like the shirts are somehow automatically generated via the "Latest News" headlines on their Web site. I hope they’re automatically generated; that would explain the non-sequiter weirdness of a lot of them

But wait: there’s more! CNN shirts have (insert dramatic pause here) a social networking element to them!

I’m not joking. From their FAQ: "When you purchase T-shirts from the CNN Shirt store, you will see ‘Share on Facebook’ links that accompany all purchased headlines on your receipt page. When you click on the share button, the headline you purchased shows up in your news and minifeed."

But … but … what about MySpace?

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 7th, 2008 at 8:21 am and is filed under Internet Stuff, Social Media.