Still more on Etsy circles

More admin factoids and opinions about the continuing Etsy circle experiment:



"The number of circles someone is in some ways an indicator of their influence [sic]."

First of all, this sentence is missing a verb. Secondly, an indicator of their influence over whom or what, exactly? And again, how does one build the number of circles they are in? If this metric is going to serve as a yardstick against which Etsy measures a member's influence, how does a member improve this number, without resorting to spam? So far, the answer seems to be that you circle every single Etsy name you can find. Also, does "influence" equal "sales"? If not, who cares how influential you are?



"Many members are in hundreds of circles, and their favoriting and circling activity can end up having far-reaching impact."

Impact on whom or what, exactly? Honestly, who has time to look at all of this clutter in an activity feed, process the clutter, and then. . . shocker. . . buy something? I have never bought a listing I saw in my activity feed. Have you?



"It's a number that can be increased by sharing and be generous."

There's no doubt the number can be increased. Generosity has nothing to do with it. People are now madly circling anything in a blind act to be influential and impactful. It no longer has anything to do with personal taste, much less generosity. It's now become a desperate attempt to unlock the Etsy Success Code in the new social commerce experiment.



"Circles are about people, and people are behind shops."

I have to call bullshit here. Circles are about clicks, possibly about marketing the site and not the seller, maybe oh so slightly about actual sales. Circles are not at all about people, in this incarnation.



"Soon people will be able to have multiple shops on Etsy."

I'm sure that's news to many peoople who already have multiple shops on Etsy. If the intention here is to be able to run multiple shops without having to sign out and sign back in, that is one change that would be useful to many sellers.



"I've heard folks here [in the forums] refer to it as a popularity contest, but it's a much more democratic one than anything that has come before it here."

I want to diagram this sentence. People have refered to the Circlization as a popularity contest, yes. So, this sentence says it's a "more democratic" popularity contest? Like voting on Homecoming King and Queen? Also, this is the first time I've ever seen an admin admit that Etsy has not been democratic in the past.

sean11 is starting to crack.

I would like to summarize this from my point of view. I'm in a lot of circles. I'm signed in to Etsy for hours a day. I don't look at my Activity Feed, except to clear the number. I have never bought anything from my Activity Feed.

My perception is that it all comes down to clicks over commerce. The site looks more popular without actually selling more. It is a commerce site, after all.

Have we seen the February Weather Report yet?

How many Etsy circles are you in?

So, today's Etsy shenanigans, Circle count competition.

"Circle counts are now visible throughout the site: on profiles, shop pages and listing pages." More or less every single page that comes up on Etsy will now show the number of circles to which you belong.

Great.

What is the purpose of this? Besides jamming home the complete, all-encompassing point of the social commerce experiment that Etsy has become in 2011?

To quote the announcement thread:
"If you're a shop owner, being favorited by someone with a high circle count means exposure--everyone who's added that person to their circle will become aware of your shop through their activity feeds. Items are going viral this way every day now on Etsy."

Three issues:
Issue one: How in heaven's name are we, as shop owners, supposed to campaign to become favorited by someone with a high circle count? I have avoided this phrase thus far, although it has been thrown around Etsy a lot in the last couple of months: This is like a high school clique, in the worst possible sense.

You have to make the popular kids like you. The Etsy popular kids are the sellers making the stuff that has been on the Etsy front page for years. You know the stuff I'm talking about, just like you know who made that stuff.

I'm going to make what I want. That's why I make stuff, and one-of-a-kind stuff, at that. I want the person who buys something of mine to have the only one in existence. That's also the kind of stuff I buy on Etsy. I don't want it to look like everything else.

Issue two: Are buyers even using circles? Casual buyers who drop in and shop a bit and pick up something? I highly doubt it. That pretty much nullifies the entire concept of circles, unless the idea truly is that circles are designed to keep sellers from buying from one another in a true spiralling circle of no profits for sellers.

Issue three: Notice that I emphasized viral in the statement above. Viral? Really? Listings are going viral on Etsy? How? Why? What? Are they selling? Or just spinning around in a claustrophobic Spirograph of self-reference?

"[P]eople will add you to their circles if they like what you're finding."

I don't want people to like what I'm finding. I want people to buy my stuff.

How are your sales for the past six weeks? Because mine are not good.

Can I be in your circle?

Etsy is more fun with friends

I have decided that this condescending, grade school primer language is causing me to curse more than usual.

Today's Admin Annoucement: Find your friends on Etsy.

I didn't realize my friends were lost.

Etsy has added a "Find Your Friends" button, with no filter for finding those who still owe you money. THAT is a function a lot of us could use, but I digress. You then click which email service you want to use, and sign into your email. Automagically, Etsy connects to your address book as fast as you can say "Hocus Pocus" or "Walla Walla, Washington."

Etsy "fetches" your contacts, matches them with people who haven't opted out of the automagical email id on Etsy, and you can add them to your circle, spam them, or convo them for that $40.00 they borrowed back in college.

You can also send invitations (i.e. "spam") to people who don't even have an Etsy account! "Invitations are limited right now to 20 per day -- use them well!"
Translation: "You can only send 20 spam emails a day. Remember when we used to tell you you were not allowed, under any circumstance, to spam Etsians? Well, forget about that, and please spam non-Etsians as well. Twenty a day. Get clicking and typing!"

And anyone you connect to through Find Your Friends will be able to connect to others through Find Your Friends, and so on and so forth. It can spread like a virus! Like H1-N1!

I would like to repeat something glaringly obvious here. If my friends are in my address book, they are not lost. If I want them to know about my Etsy shop, believe me, they know about my Etsy shop. I know how to copy and paste a link, and put it in an email to a friend.

Why does Etsy want the email addresses of the people I know? I already understand how to steer them toward my shop, and even to other listings on Etsy that I think they might like.

I understand that this is part of the great "social commerce experiment" and all, but I value my friends' privacy more than I value Etsy's desire to mine my email data to grow their business by spamming people who trusted me with their information.

Please remember, not to venture too far into conspiracy paranoia country, that verified email addresses are some of the most valuable pieces of information to any online marketing company. Remember also that current Etsy board members have fingers in all sorts of other online venues.

I think the clock is striking thirteen.

Etsy's Rob Kalin speaks!

Rob Kalin, aka Rokali, spoke up in the Forums last week to address the Etsy community's concerns about recent changes.
Rob is the current CEO of Etsy.

He explained that the words in the header had been replaced with icons to facilitate a more international market, and to make the shopping cart more visible.

He said that the icons were handmade, "pixel by pixel."

He said that he appreciates all of the "negativity" and "criticism" in the forums, because they are more interesting and instructive than compliments.

He said that, "Over $1000.00 per minute is sold on Etsy," and they're monitoring how the changes affect sellers.

So far, so good.

On Etsy's new social networking focus:

"Shopping is itself a unique social experience. This is what we're designing for."

I would argue that online shopping is not a social experience. It's me being able to find what I want, at the price I want to pay, quickly and efficiently. A better search is more important than a social experience. If I want to browse, I will take the time to browse, and enjoy what I come across. I don't often involve anyone else in this process. Maybe I am abnormal.

On Etsy's new homepage:

"Etsy's curated spaces are going away. . . Instead of an admin deciding that every single visitor to Etsy should see a particular Treasury on the homepage, the homepage will be personalized."

I'm not sure how to translate this. On a positive note, we can hope that this will give a wider selection of Etsy sellers more exposure. On a negative note, I have to wonder how they will choose what will pop up on your homepage. Will these be treasuries curated from your teams, those in your circle, those with shops Etsy would suggest?

On finding friends on Etsy, or sending them to Etsy:

"For the 90% of people here on Etsy who don't have shops, we're seeing that finding people they know on Etsy has a huge impact on getting them to register, buy stuff, and stick around. . . we're building tools that ultimately help customers find you, which can be quite different than the tools that help you find customers."

I don't believe this theory, but then I don't buy into the entire "social commerce" vision. I'm not approaching this as a buyer only, though. I'm approaching it as a seller/buyer. Everyone I know also has heard about Etsy, through me. As a buyer, I shop a site and buy what I want to buy. If I enjoy a shopping experience, I will tell others about it. I would never use a "find your friends" function on a site as a buyer. Would you?

On improving sales numbers:

"The total $ value of sales on Etsy is up, so the changes we're making are improving the commerce side of this marketplace."

Actual January numbers showed that growth is slowing. Many of the changes Rob Kalin is discussing have been in place for less than a month. The figures for February have not been published yet.

On "Forum Migration":

"Our old forums ran on an outmoded infrastructure, one that we're not supporting anymore. The teams codebase was the future, and we migrated forums to teams."

I don't believe this one. The public forums that Etsy kept were converted to public teams. Others were killed off. Why? Teams (1) require more clicks to navigate, and (2) are not immediately visible to the ninety percent of Etsians who are buyers only. All forums could have been migrated to public teams, and the community would have been kept intact.

On continuity:

"If someone left Etsy in let's say 2006, and came back today in 2011, my hunch is that it'd still feel like the same place."

No. There are still people signing in, asking where the forums are. There are regulars who are confused about the new layout, and convinced that the changes in layout, forum structure, alchemy's "rest" and search have negatively impacted their businesses. If someone took a break around Thanksgiving last year and returned now, it would not feel like the same place.

In response to a seller saying they just want to sell their stuff, and have no interest in circles:

"What you're saying is you don't want to help yourself."

No, what the seller is saying is that they don't believe in your vision that circles will sell their stuff.

On how people buy online by searching, not by looking at favorites, either their own or others:

"That is how commerce currently works. . . we here at Etsy are not trying to uphold the status quo. . . I hope we discover much more, because that is the future I wish to invent."

Here we're getting down to the nitty gritty. Please, Etsy, uphold the status quo while it is still the status quo. I can appreciate wanting to predict the future and adapt to that, but I can also appreciate that people shop most of the time by searching for what they want to buy. Do you look at other people's favorite items in order to buy something 99% of the time?

Also, they're working on the search, tripling the content team which takes care of resellers et al, and working on a new listing process.

Sean11 goes on to explain how Circles and other networking are just extensions of the word of mouth advertising that has helped Etsy achieve the success it has seen thus far--word of mouth that was done by those of us who have been on Etsy for awhile. If you're favorited by someone with a "high circle count," this gets you seen by more potential buyers. Also, clicks on the Circle icon are growing by leaps and bounds.

Again, I can only speak for myself. I have quit using Circles pretty much completely. I'm just not interested in them. I don't spend nearly the time on Etsy that I used to a couple of months ago. I can't imagine most of the buyers I know personally using circles the way these guys think Circles will be used.

What do you think? This is a lot of information to process. What is it saying? And are you buying it?

Etsy search improvements and issues

Etsy is changing their search. One of the biggest complaints from buyers and sellers over the years has been that you can't find what you're looking for while using the search on Etsy. What you type in the search box doesn't translate to the results that Etsy spits out.

The changes, announced February third in this announcement post, were supposed to achieve the following ends:

More precise results: The example given here is for "cat eye glasses" spitting out any listings with "cat," "eye" or "glasses." The new search will only bring up listings with all three words.

When I search "cat eye glasses," my first result is, in fact, an eyeball ring. There are 2,835 results. The second is a necklace. The third is an eyeglass lanyard. There are socks, earrings and a painting, all in the first dozen or so results.

Smart filtering: The automagical alogrithm will bring up the most relevant category for you when you search. "Cat eye glasses" should take you to accessories. Since most of the first page results are jewelry, I would say that this isn't working either.

Spell check: Another name for "autosuggest with a drill down," actually. The examples given are "amethyst" and "amigurumi," because only spelling bee champs know how to spell those words. We are not, by and large, spelling bee champs. Okay, I may have won a spelling bee or two, but I never learned the term "amigurumi" until I got to Etsy. If you're searching for an amethyst amigurumi, the idea here is that life is probably not going to treat you kindly.

Let's try it!

If you search "amethyst amigurumi," spell check will not help you. The good news is, you get a page of seven purple little crocheted critters.

So, what do these changes mean to you, the Etsy seller?

Sellers now need to repeat important keywords in their titles, descriptions and tags, all three places. Google searches pull from titles and descriptions. The new Etsy search pulls or will pull from tags. The words that sellers use to search will have to exactly match your tags, supposedly, for your tags to come up as relevant. Therefore, it's best to keep your tags to either one word, or use phrases that you are sure your buyers will use for searching. Tag stuffing isn't going to work.

Also, most recent listings will still default over most relevant. Hit that renew button, people! Hit it again!

No official word on when these changes will go sitewide, if they already have, or what they're learning while testing, but you can find the forum discussion thread here. Here is a non-admin thread with a lot of great info.

Many sellers have noticed a decline in both views and sales since these changes were announced. Since they coincided with the forum and other changes, it's hard to determine any true cause-effect relationship. Also notice that at no point does anyone in admin clearly spell out how to improve your tags to get your listing seen. If I'm a seller, how do I make this work for me?

And, if I'm a buyer, why do you assume I can't spell amethyst?

Etsy admin poll results

You voted, and here are the results.

Question: Do you feel bad for Etsy admin?

The seventy-seven votes break down like this:

52% of you voted "Heck no, they seem to be enjoying themselves."

17% of you voted, "No, they believe in what they're doing."

14% of you voted, "Yes, they're hopeless pawns."

8% of you voted, "What's an Etsy admin?"

The people have spoken. I love democracy.

Saluting the Etsy muted, part four

This just in from the Mute Desk:

jenmaestre, amazing pencil genius artist, permamuted for calling out obvious resellers.

blackgermanshepard, whose Etsy shop has taken on an interesting look since the mute came down.

And eclipse, the opinionated and eloquent polar bear.

In other intriguing news, the muted are now being told who reported their posts. Nice of Etsy to further pit one seller against another.

Their definition of "community" is certainly different from mine.

I salute you, sisters!

Saluting the recently Etsy muted

Recently muted under the new Etsy forum policies:

FancyPantsAndMore, who I cited in the post below for being part of the group organizing efforts to help designedbylucinda. One of Fancy's mute-able posts was, "Yippee Diane!" She got a thirty day mute from the forums.

ArtmakersWorlds, for posting "Bite me" to no one in particular.

KarmaRox, who has been an Etsy seller since 2007, and has offered help and warmth to many in the forums.

All three spoke up against the changes currently occurring on Etsy, and were chastised for being "too vocal" in the forums. Too vocal? Interesting turn of phrase there. There is at least one seller who can no longer post in the forums who hasn't received a muting notice from Etsy yet.

The results of these mutings are twofold: There are those who see this as a challenge and want to ramp up the fight, even if it results in their own muting. And there are those who see this as both frightening and intimidating, and are now wary of speaking in public. In the past, Etsy has found loopholes for closing down shops when sellers have spoken out. What a great way to build a more social shopping site that's all about community. Micro-economies indeed.

Imagine trying to sign in to Etsy, and finding your shop gone. Hours and hours of work, customers waiting on shipments. Gone.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you.

And to the muted, this fight isn't over.

For more details, check out this thread over on the UEF.

Take the Etsy admin poll!

With Admin posting bizarrely vague announcements and closing threads right and left, do you feel sorry for them? Are they being forced to do this by The Man? Are they relishing all of the changes? What's your opinion? You can vote in the sidebar poll!