Today Threadless.com kicked off a Facebook fan push by posting a new and fun video every hour. The hosts in the video pick one and sometimes up to 3 fans to give away tee-shirt, a promotional code for merchandise and sometimes a flash drive with the Threadless.com logo.

For those who do not know who Threadless.com is, ask a business school student. Colleges are using them as an example of doing business in the world 2.0. In short, Threadless runs design competitions on an online social network. Members of the network submit their ideas for T-shirts — hundreds each week — and then vote on which ones they like best. Hundreds of thousands of people are using the site as a kind of community center, where they blog, chat about designs, socialize with their fellow enthusiasts — and buy a ton of shirts at $15 each. Revenue is growing 500 percent a year, despite the fact that the company has never advertised, employ no professional designers, use no modeling agency or fashion photographers, have no sales force, and enjoy no retail distribution. As result, costs were low, margins were above 30 percent, and — because community members tell them precisely which shirts to make — every product eventually sells out.

There model is lean, young and fun. It seems they understand that if you make a good product, it will sell. Don’t worry about the small stuff, let the business grow from listening to your customers.

Now back to why their marketing works:

1. It’s fun (viewers are entertained)

2. It’s informal (viewers can relate)

3. It has a call to action (become a Threadless fan so they can market back to you)

3.5 There is constant contact. (hourly updates)

4. It’s viral (anyone that comments or becomes a fan, the news of such action will go in all their friend’s newsfeeds)

5. It’s targeted (users on Facebook fall in their target demo)

6. Except for the giveaways (which has exclusivity and is branded with the Threadless logo), IT”S FREE!

Threadless is a perfect example of how to use Facebook effectively without spending tons of dough on building an application. I am sure Threadless will see dividends from their marketing experiment today. I have contacted them about numbers and will update this blog as they become available. Their Facebook page is only 2 months old, but they already have over 26,000 fans!

The next step I would take if I was Threadless is to post the videos on other social networks as well. Such as YouTube, MySpace and Blip.TV in an attempt to centralize their membership and recruit those that are not on Facebook. Also, Facebook is not a good posting site to share video due to their tight security and inability to convert video to embeddable code.

None the less, bravo Threadless.

2:56 update

Looks like Threadless got about 800 new fans! That is a win by any stretch.