Monday, February 7, 2011

Greetings and salutations

"The extreme always seems to make an impression." One of many great truths I learned from the movie "Heathers."

Why am I here? I've been buying and selling on Etsy for a couple of years. I have supported and promoted this company, recruiting other buyers and sellers along the way. I have put countless hours into this site, all the work of listing, customer service, selling and becoming part of a community that I have grown to cherish. And I kept my sense of humor and rarely bitched about the sporadic nature of sales, the invisibility of shops, even the unpredictablity of those running Etsy and their many ill-advised, badly timed and incoherently explained changes.

Then, they recently did three things that caused me to lose my sense of humor:
1. Mucking up the forums, obliterating certain sections, policing the remaining sections like Nazis, and creating the horrifying abyss of a mostly useless billion teams.
2. Giving Alchemy "a rest" while it is "tweaked," managing to wipe out some sellers' businesses with one flippant announcement and providing no date for its reopening.
3. Introducing the EtsyFacebook revolution, involving mining data from members' email address books, circles of senseless promotions, and a gift finder button that automagically links to your Facebook account without notification.

These three announcements and changes were made in about a week's time. Etsians are reeling with the implications of what has already been announced and what might be announced next. I want to use this blog to examine and analyze what's really going on. That can no longer be done on Etsy proper, because threads are being closed with lightning speed if they are not deemed "constructive." Your constructive post is my antiseptic party line.

As Christian Slater said in Heathers, "You say tomayto, I say tomahto."

Let's see where this goes. And please feel free to chime in and let me know what you've seen, how you feel, and what it means to you.

To use a popular thread closing word, "Cheers!"

3 comments:

  1. fantastic. and I wish that none of this were true.

    ReplyDelete
  2. And yet again, Etsy insists on treating paying customers like work house inmates.

    ReplyDelete
  3. crapped on once again, can't wait for the next round.

    ReplyDelete

Dish the dirt here.