Etsy Caves - kinda... okay not really.

A media firestorm seems to be the only thing that can move Etsy from its handmade pedestal enough to actually remove the headphones and stop glancing at fake Chuck Norris' twitter-pretend it's listening long enough to trick you into believing it. Don't be fooled.

They just released this little ditty addressing complaints and what they are doing/have done to address them and actually eek out a half-assed apology and a half-baked fix:

Yesterday and today there have been a handful of articles reporting that purchases on Etsy are public. The articles have led to concerns by members of our community.

We want to apologize. We also want to set the record straight about how our product works and about changes we made today in response to your feedback.

Are my purchases on Etsy public?

No. As of right now, all your purchases on Etsy are private.

Were there changes to Etsy that made my purchases public?

No. The issue here is our Feedback system, which has not changed in six years. We do not directly publish your purchases on Etsy. However, when a seller leaves feedback for an item you bought, or you leave feedback for an item you purchased, we would link to the item. Our Feedback system has always worked this way; our original thinking was that it's important to know more about the transaction, to better establish trust in the marketplace.

We added the option to enter your real name when registering. Right next to this text field, it says: "Your full name will appear on your public profile. This is optional." Some people enter their name, some don't. As of right now, 25% of people (including us) have entered their real name.

It is the confluence of these two things that led us to this position: if you enter your real name, purchase an item, and the seller leaves feedback for this item, this purchase will be publicly visible via our Feedback system. Search engines index our site, which means this data can turn up there, too. It's been this way since October.

If nothing has recently changed, what's going on?

There is a lot of misinformation being spread right now. One blog post even has the outlandish title "Etsy Makes All Of Its Users' Activity Public." This is simply untrue. On Etsy, private conversations, financial information, billing data — all are now and have always been strictly private.There was an article published on ArsTechnica that made clear how direct the connection was between using your real name on Etsy, buying an item and receiving public feedback for that item. The reaction to this article has made us realize that we need to change the way our Feedback system works, and this is what we’ve already done today.

Why make any changes to the Feedback system?

The article and response highlighted for us how we've outgrown our current Feedback system. It dates back to a time when payment for items was sent after completing the checkout process on Etsy. This meant that sellers needed to know how trustworthy their buyer was. We now require payment prior to completing checkout, so this issue has basically gone away.

We believe that markets are conversations. We want people to discuss what they purchase, although this will often mean discussing it in private. As such, we have removed the link from a piece of feedback (which is public) to the item that was purchased (which is now private).

What is Etsy’s view on privacy?

We take privacy very seriously. We work with TRUSTe and audit our privacy policies regularly, notifying all members via email any time a substantive change is made.

In the future, we may provide an option to share individual purchases publicly at the time of purchase. This will be completely opt-in and on a purchase-by-purchase basis.

We are deeply sorry for any confusion and will work hard to regain your trust.

What’s next?

We have been working quickly to make changes based on your input and opinions. We will continue to work on this, for what’s really needed is a rethinking of our entire Feedback system. In the meantime, all purchases are private, and feedback doesn’t link to items.

If you have any more questions or concerns, please email support [!at] etsy.com or convo us directly on Etsy.

Thank you.
Rob (CEO) and Adam (COO)

The forums aren't buying it. Many sellers immediately pointed out the REAL issues remain unaddressed: no notification when this went live, real names going public and a deafening lack of answers for the user-base in the forums themselves.



And those "handful of articles"? Artsy Alien was nice enough to list them all here:

Consumerist - http://consumerist.com/2011/03/you-want-your-real-name-associated-with-your-etsy-purchase-history-right.html

Ars Technica - http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/03/etsy-users-irked-after-buyers-purchases-exposed-to-the-world.ars

BoingBoing - http://www.boingboing.net/2011/03/15/etsys-privacy-valdez.html

MSNBC - http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/03/15/6273251-e-commerce-site-etsy-exposes-users-shopping-histories

Forbes - http://blogs.forbes.com/kashmirhill/2011/03/15/etsys-experiment-with-social-could-be-costly/

Digital Trends - http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/etsy-comes-under-fire-for-revealing-buyers-names-purchase-histories/

Help Net Security - http://www.net-security.org/secworld.php?id=10746

NY Magazine - http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/03/unannounced_privacy_changes_ex.html

NY Convergence - http://nyconvergence.com/2011/03/etsy-exposes-buyers-and-purchases-online.html

Auctionbytes - http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y11/m03/i15/s02

The Business Insider - http://www.businessinsider.com/etsy-takes-a-page-from-the-facebook-playbook-2011-3

Gizmodo - http://gizmodo.com/5782146/etsy-privacy-catastrophe-reveals-users-full-names-dildo-preferences-and-other-less-embarrassing-purchase-information

Village Voice - http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/03/etsy_privacy_policy_dildos.php

The Mary Sue (awesome new geek chick blog, if you haven't seen it yet) - http://www.themarysue.com/etsy-privacy-settings/

Buzzfeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/etsy-new-privacy-policy-not-so-private

About.com - http://antivirus.about.com/b/2011/03/14/the-etsy-trojan.htm

Reputation.com - http://reputation.com/blog/2011/03/15/etsy-privacy-change-shows-users-purchase-histories/

Yahoo - http://news.yahoo.com/s/digitaltrends/20110315/tc_digitaltrends/etsycomesunderfireforrevealingbuyersnamespurchasehistories

Salon.com - http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/feature/2011/03/15/etsy_privacy_people_search/

NowPublic - http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/etsy-people-search-privacy-policy-change-exposes-users-2767071.html

Washington Post - http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-tech/post/the-circuit-kerry-hutchinson-introduce-infrastructure-bank-franken-to-propose-new-net-neutrality-bill-free-calls-texts-to-japan/2011/03/08/AB7m9gW_blog.html

Geek Sugar - http://www.geeksugar.com/Etsy-Privacy-Settings-14921901


Added: Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/15/etsy-privacy-debacle-site_n_836277.html

Added: Ars technica Update post


That more than I can hold in twelve hands, how about you?

From the Bitches' Auxiliary - Credit where credit isn't due

Thought you might find this post in the Storque interesting.

What's particularly bad about this, aside from the immature self-promoting, is the way that Etsy is trying to take credit for the things that its sellers are doing - it's "Etsy" who's going green, not the individual sellers, "Etsy" who makes the cool items, not the sellers, and so on.

Really, Etsy is no more "green" than eBay - some of the people who use Etsy do practice sustainable practices, but really - it's an international venue that works by having people selling - and shipping - small items one at a time. The carbon footprint, collectively, for the shipping alone must be astonishing. And it's not like all - or even a majority - of sellers follow sustainable practices; I'm sure there are any number of them using fabrics imported from China, petroleum products, and the like. Gluing together a bunch of cheap crud into a decorative widget is a waste of resources rather than a saving of them.

Hell, promoting consumption of frivolous and trendy consumer goods - let alone poorly made ones - is about as far from green as you can get. Being truly green is about encouraging people to NOT buy things, and yet, what is Etsy about? Buying things. Silly things. Unnecessary, cheap things.

Etsy, collectively, is NOT green; it's taking credit for the sellers who are - who it doesn't even bother to credit in its post - and that leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

Tickle us pink, we were right

Remember how we were afraid that Etsy was "branding" the wrong image - remember how we always call them hipsters and people laugh. Remember the shit some of you gave us for it.* Well, guess what?! We were right!

Last week, New York Magazine did a shop local feature with their fave items from Etsy, which, in the writer's own words, is about what exactly?

When Etsy, the Brooklyn-based online marketplace for all things handcrafted, launched in 2005, it sounded like another small-time, doomed-for-failure venture trying to capitalize on homespun hipsterism. Why not just sell and buy stuff on eBay, like the rest of the world? And who wants to buy other people’s crocheted pot holders, anyway? Hah. By 2008, Etsy’s sales had reached $87.5 million. And to its 2.1 million registered users, Etsy is much more than a virtual warehouse. Etsians, as regular buyers and sellers call themselves, want to live in a handmade world, from the clothes they wear to the forest-life stencils on their walls.

The Etsy lifestyle has a recognizable aesthetic, which looks remarkably like that of skinny-jeans-wearing, Slow Food–eating, bike-commuting hipsters. The site has pushed this aesthetic global; its vendors represent 150 countries.

Wow...way to ignore the majority of sellers who don't fit that aesthetic! What about all the metalsmiths and artists with years of experience and/or training? What about the potters who actually know how to make stoneware? What about the non-hipsters (which is just about everyone but admin)? Now granted, other NY hipsters like NY hipster ware - so NY mag was appealing to its own demographic. But this Etsy brand is out there - it's public knowledge - it's in stone.

This branding should piss off everyone who sells at Etsy because this makes Etsy it's own brand, attempting to attract only a certain type of buyer - they don't know who their sellers' audience or clients are. All they know is what they like - it's a fucking juried site! Only those they promote are going to benefit from being on Etsy.

My advice, and do take this as you will, but I would jump ship faster than rats when they set a cat loose. If you're going to be bringing in all your buyers anyway, might as well do it somewhere cheaper - say a free shop like ecrater or blujay, or on a handmade site like Artfire where a free shop is possible - or an outright juried site like 1000markets - there are lots of alternatives that haven't yet branded themselves into a corner!

When we told Etsy to advertise, it was to use their trademarked tagline (which is misused in the NYMag article btw) not to brand themselves. As a venue, their brand should be broad - instead they narrowed it down to themselves and their taste, 20-something delusion with a whiff of arrogance.


*Many of our regular readers did get it, but there were some doubters, some cupcakes, and some denialists - so to them: how's Etsy been with the vaseline? cause you have been taking it whether you realized it or not

Truth in Advertising (or lack of it)

In an article on Friday by Tech Confidential, Etsy Chief Cupcake Officer Rob Kalin reports:


"There are 200,000 sellers making their livings from Etsy,"


ORLY? Let's check some facts. If you go to the Sellers page on Etsy and have a look at the list of seller accounts, you'll see there are 10,408 pages. At 20 accounts per page, that's 208,160 sellers. But oh, just wait a second... if you sort the sellers by number of listings, you'll find that the number of shops with at least one item for sale in them ends at page 4,551, meaning there are actually only 91,020 people selling things on Etsy, at the time of this writing. [edit: at the time of publication, these numbers are already inaccurate]

Huh. Wow. So Chief Cupcake is off by a mere 117,140 sellers. Maybe it's a misquote? Possibly, but given Etsy's propensity for inflating numbers and Rob's history of bluffing his way into jobs, we doubt it. He either didn't bother to check the numbers on his own site, or he didn't bother to tell the truth. You pick!

Let's examine the second half of that sentence. "Making their living from Etsy". Now apparently, in this thread, some people are defining "making a living" as buying some groceries and putting gas in their car. We here at EB tend to think of the phrase in the more old-fashioned way, as in, earning an income, not pocket money. How many sellers on Etsy are actually making their income from Etsy? We're not sure exactly how many, but we're pretty fucking sure it ain't 200,000. Seller Abitabite does a little math in the thread and points out that since in June the value of sold items on Etsy was $6.5 million, 200,000 sellers means that $32.50 was earned in that month per seller. Is $32.50 a month a liveable wage? You decide!

This is hardly the first time Etsy spins some incorrect numbers for PR fluff. Remember the big announcement they made about reaching ONE MILLION members? Except it wasn't one million members, it was one million registrations. Thanks to numerous people pointing out that little error they used the correct word in the Storque article three days later. Oh, and don't mind that little afterthought tacked on down at the bottom of the article in italics, the part about not accounting for users who have multiple accounts and the "one million" including accounts that have been closed.

Etsy isn't even above using sellers' private income as fodder for the PR machine. Several people in the thread recalled Etsy telling Martha Stewart that Emily Martin of TheBlackApple, one of Etsy's top handmade sellers, makes six figures, which Martha announced during her segment with Emily. According to Emily's blog, that figure is not an accurate reflection of her business, and was revealed against her wishes. For shame, Etsy. We thought you were all about respecting each other.

Etsy, could you just get fucking real, for a minute? You have half the sellers you say you do. Almost none of those sellers make a living just from Etsy. And those who do don't make six figures. Of course, we don't expect you to share any numbers that would be real eye-openers, like how many accounts have been closed, how many shops have been opened and never used, how many buyers have signed up and never bought anything. But enough with pimping a dream that doesn't exist. Figure out what's good and true about yourself, and sell that instead. Once upon a time you said you favoured transparency. The waters are looking pretty murky now.