If You Really, Really Like a Tweet, Now You Can Get It Etched into Wood or Metal
It’s one thing to “favorite” a clever tweet. It’s even more generous to retweet it. But if you really, really like a tweet, you now can get it laser-etched onto a small piece of wood or metal.
#PermanentRetweet launched on April 1, but founder Brian Thompson insists he is serious. And although he is a branding pro by day, he does have a track record of amusing, interesting, crafty side projects — notably his eBook Safes, which are physical hardbacks with enough of their innards removed to accommodate a Kindle.
This time Thompson was evidently so impressed by this tweet that he decided it should exist in a less ephemeral form. (You can buy it yourself, for $30.) From there it was a short step to offering a “customizable” service — $20 for the tweet of your choice on wood, $25 to have it etched on metal.
“That tweet,” Thompson tells me via email, “just got me off my ass to actually execute the idea. It was originally inspired by my wife’s frustration with how distracted I get by Twitter, as she put it ‘looking at your phone instead of being here in the real world with us.’ ”
And while he freely acknowledges the absurd and humorous nature of the enterprise, the idea is not a prank. He has access to a laser cutter at the MakeATX workshop in Austin — and he has made his first sale: This Damien Fahey tweet bought by someone who intends to give it to a Fahey fan. (“When someone orders a #PermanentRetweet that they didn’t write themselves,” Thompson adds, “I’m giving two-thirds of the purchase price to the original tweeter.”)
As for his wife’s point about Thompson being a little too distracted by Twitter? “Of course,” he concedes, “now I probably spend more time looking for great tweets, so that backfired on her.”
You can follow Yahoo Tech on Twitter right here. Etch our tweets, please.
