As you know, Threadless doesn't do much by way of paid advertising. The business has grown because people just can't help telling other people about the amazing designs created by this community.

And that's exactly why we are trying some advertising on Digg.

As a community-driven operation, we love the fact that Digg users get to collectively decide if these sponsored diggs / ads are useful/fun or intrusive/unfun by digging them or burying them. Much as everyone here does by voting on designs day in and day out. Digg is putting power in the hands of its audience in a way few media companies can or even would want to. We can't help applauding that.

You might be able to see some of our sponsored diggs on digg.com. Only a portion of digg visitors are seeing them currently but they'll be increasing the visibility of the ads over the coming days. If you can't see them, there's a screen shot on this ReadWrite post.

So, check out the ads and if you dig them, then ... er ... digg them. And let us know what you think of our foray into these types of ads.