Etsy News: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Marimello loves Etsy. Correction, Marimello wastes countless hours trawling Etsy for the new and unusual. Etsy is a great place to hook up with makers and crafters who share a similar goal of making consumerism more interesting to put it simply. If you want to talk about buying Indie and the handmade movement, Etsy is a goldmine.

But we're not trying to make selling there our day job and plenty of people are. One of the more important things Etsy has allowed crafters and maker to do is to participate in the creation of a new business model. (And for that, Marimello tips her NaikFur hat!)

Alas, that's just the big picture. For those of us keeping up with Unofficial Etsy News lately, it's no surprise that there is a bit of distention among the Etsian ranks. The Unofficial Etsy News blog is, of course, unrelated to the actual business of Etsy:

"UEN’s editors are NOT employed by Etsy or affiliated with Etsy; we just care about the community."

And the, um, goal of the site is stated thusly:

"If/when an Etsy-sanctioned news and announcements vehicle becomes available, this site will no longer be needed. At that point, it may continue in a limited capacity, change directions, or be no more! We’ll see, but until then, many thanks for reading."

So it is exactly zero surprise the Etsy, while providing the most crafty-user friendly site out there, leaves users with something to be desired. But it was a bit of a surprise however that this news hit the Consumerist yesterday. You can read the Consumerist's post here to get the gist of the gripe.

It reminds Marimello of a couple of real life jobs though. The head honchos start the wheels of restructuring, but in order to keep the momentum of the business, information about the details of the plan must be handled delicately. It raises the question of how much information about company structuring is too much information to be distributed and, more importantly, in the webby world of Etsy, where do the buyers and sellers factor into the chain of information dissemination?


[Image about is Clare Boothe Luce. And no offense Dorothy Parker, but when won't Clare's quote come in handy?]