Are you sure? The general consensus among sellers is that the search tools are lacking. They are great at finding fairly random collections of items, and some of the tools are fun toys, but it's not the best if you're actually looking for something specific. About half of the sections on the page are fairly useless for serious shopping.
The number of items on Etsy has increased by 100 times in the past few years, but the lens through which you can see the items has stayed the same size - search pages of 20-30 items. Few people are going to page through more than 20 pages of results.
Basic search has improved significantly since Chad Dickerson came on board, but I think even the tech staff acknowledges that there's a long way to go.
One major problem is the tagging system, and the lack of true categories. It used to be that your first tag functioned as the 'top level category', but they didn't make this clear in the listing creation step. You could (can?) also choose contradictory tags/categories with no problems. The top level categories are rather disparate conceptually, and aren't particularly well chosen (i.e., 'Quilts', with 24k items, has it's own top level entry, same as 'Jewelry' with 1.4 million, and art, with 500k). Also, the tags and titles are completely in the hands of sellers, some of whom mis-label items inadvertently or intentionally. It's a bit of a tricky deal.
Yeah, the creative flash tools drew good attention and may have engaged people early on. I think now though, with the overwhelming wealth and variety of items for sale on the site, and with the large number of experienced shoppers, the interest of most people is in efficiently sifting through the items. I've heard more than a few people say they were turned away by seemingly random search results, and that they have grown tired of playing with the color search and whatnot.
What strong community communication tools are you referring to?
As far as I can see, actually cultivating community has been a big shortcoming for Etsy. The 'teams' section of the site is very underdeveloped (it's been the same for years and isn't tied into the rest of the site very well). The forums are frequented by the a small group of focused people, mainly all sellers, and the tone on there has been very negative for years. The in-house messaging system ('conversations') is extremely lacking, with no serious organization tools for your messages. The shop/item favoriting system doesn't function as a social networking 'friends' system, it's geared only towards shopping.
Etsy sellers tend to network through their own blogs (mainly on blogger), independent craft blogs, and use Twitter for communication.
Hey Joshwa, thanks for the tweet-vite, I'm glad to share.
Etsy is successful, ultimately, not because of some putative secret sauce (though we do have very powerful and unique behind-the-scenes tech).
We are successful, ultimately, because we are providing tools that support and enable the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of people, help their artistic and creative achievements be seen and recognized around the world, and subvert the common shopping experience people have to add a personal connection to the creators of the goods they buy.
If anyone were to identify a similarly unmet need, another ignored and under-served community, and created a place online that had a positive impact on the lives, they would also succeed. What "business model", which metrics or revenue streams make sense, depends on that community's characteristics, and it doesn't have to be complicated or some sort of trick.
That all said, it's of course crucial to have reliable, flexible, scalable, rapidly evolving technology behind you. I have been working here relentlessly to get our team to the point where we are free to innovate as much as we can. To be honest, there is already abundant information on the web and elsewhere about what works, and what doesn't; it's not really a mystery.
But you need the resoluteness to actually execute on these best practices, and the courage to innovate even in the face of occasional mistakes.
I'm quite familiar with all sorts of websites, but haven't ever used Facebook. Last night, I was trying to use the site to configure a profile, test an app and share the profile with my partner - I have to say the site confuses the hell out of me. I can't believe so many people are using something with such an awful design.
I too am somewhat put off by the various statements from the CEO that his mission is to 'change the world'. I can think of another 2-3 rather manipulative, drive, self-oriented business founders who insist this about themselves, too. "Anything for another billion bucks" would be a much more honest assessment of their personal motivations.
This is at least the second long time Twitterer to found a new business related to finance or payments (the other was Jack Dorsey's Square). I guess they're in a position to perceive a high level need in that area? Pushing money around gives you a lot more chance for revenue than dealing with mere tweets, I suppose.
That's about what I envisioned while reading the article. All you'd need is different sections on Twitter, and to choose which to subscribe to when following someone. All the clients would need to know is that you're subscribed to X's stream 0 but not their stream 1.
I had years of emails from the late 90s happily stored with Excite's webmail. Then, after one or another merger they instituted a policy of deleting any account that had not been signed into within 90 days. I had moved on to using desktop pop3 mail, and that was that - they deleted all of my archived messages without any recourse or so much as an apology.
I don't believe there had been any sort of export, download or backup option, either. I should have learned from that, but lo! Netscape did the same thing to me not long afterwards.
Definitely a better plan than ignoring absolutely everyone. While it's certainly not good to be overly influenced by others, being completely unaware of what's going on isn't the best plan either... yes, I tried it.
The number of items on Etsy has increased by 100 times in the past few years, but the lens through which you can see the items has stayed the same size - search pages of 20-30 items. Few people are going to page through more than 20 pages of results.
Basic search has improved significantly since Chad Dickerson came on board, but I think even the tech staff acknowledges that there's a long way to go.
One major problem is the tagging system, and the lack of true categories. It used to be that your first tag functioned as the 'top level category', but they didn't make this clear in the listing creation step. You could (can?) also choose contradictory tags/categories with no problems. The top level categories are rather disparate conceptually, and aren't particularly well chosen (i.e., 'Quilts', with 24k items, has it's own top level entry, same as 'Jewelry' with 1.4 million, and art, with 500k). Also, the tags and titles are completely in the hands of sellers, some of whom mis-label items inadvertently or intentionally. It's a bit of a tricky deal.