Maybe Etsy said it all in a picture

This photo was posted on Etsy's Facebook wall yesterday.
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." --Confucious
Deep, huh?

The Wal-Mart/Etsy/Facebook connection, Part One

Meet Jim Breyer, a perfectly nice guy who works for the investment team Accel Partners in the Silicon Valley. According to his corporate bio, Jim has been an investor in over thirty consumer internet, media and technology companies that have completed public offerings or successful mergers. Fortune Magazine named him the smartest investor in technology in 2010.

Jim is on the board of directors for Wal-Mart Corporation, where he's the Chairman of the Strategic Planning Committee. Jim is also an investor and board member for Etsy.

Etsy is listed as one of Accel Partners' consumer internet and media clients, along with Facebook, Groupon, Kayak and more.

It seems that Accel Partners pairs businesses with venture captialists, and from there redefines business plans and company visions, with focuses on social and digital media.

According to their Crunchbase profile, Accel Partners re-invested in Etsy in August of 2010, with a Series E investment. Series investments are defined by letter as the rounds of stock offered during different rounds offered by a private company. In other words, Accel Partners, which had previously bought stock in Etsy, bought additional stock in Etsy in August of 2010.

So, a company that invests in Facebook also invests in Etsy.

Index Ventures also aquired stock in August, placing partner Danny Rimer on Etsy's board, along with Rob Kalin, Caterina Fake, Union Square Ventures Fred Wilson, and Accel's Jim Breyer.

Index Ventures is a Swiss venture capitalist firm, specializing in investments in information technology and life science companies. Etsy is listed on their online portfolio as well.

When did major Etsy changes begin, shifting it from your place to buy all things handmade to your place for social interaction? September?

More to follow on this.

The Automagical Gift Finder button

Are you a fan of magic tricks? Is Criss Angel just not magical enough for you? Then check out the mysterious and automagical "Find Gifts" button on Etsy's Buy page. Go ahead. Click it. It looks innocent enough, right? And it's there to help you! It's Etsy's way of helping you find personalized and super special gifts for everyone on your list.

What list? How does Etsy know about the people on your list? Is this button going to then ask you to profile who you're buying for--Uncle Bob in Schenectady who has a passion for fly fishing? Aunt Marcie in Boca Raton who loves Bingo night? What exactly does the "Find Gifts" button do?

It automagically connects you to Facebook, where you offer up your list of Facebook followers! Yes! And while you are finding that perfect cowl or ironic cross stitched wall hanging for the one you love, you're also adding to Etsy's ever-growing data mined list of emails that it can use however it sees fit. Can Etsy spam them? Sure! Can Etsy sell them? You bet!

This perky little button, with its precious little scene of a polar bear buying a special gift for his reindeer friend, is one more Etsy tool for getting your personal contact info for free. Genius, isn't it?

Do you know what polar bears do with reindeer and other woodland creatures? They do not buy them gifts. No, no. They eat them.

Food for thought over your morning triple flip latte with soy, eh?

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!"