I love Etsy. If you haven't heard of Etsy, it's a website that lets people sell handmade and vintage items. Kind of like an eBay for crafts people. Or like a virtual craft fair. I love craft fairs, and I don't get to as many as I'd like these days. I do a lot of browsing and even a little buying on Etsy.
This week I received an email from Etsy that said, in part:
We recently launched a new feature, Circles, that lets you connect with other people on Etsy. When you add someone to your Etsy circle, you can follow along with their favorites in your activity feed. It's illuminating!
Right now it's hard to find people you know on Etsy, and that's sad. Well, we're changing that. We're making it easy to connect your email address book to Etsy, so we can find people you know who are also members.
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only Etsy user out here who hasn't been saying, "Damn, I wish there was a way to connect with other people on Etsy! I want to see what their favorites are, and let them see mine. When is Etsy going to add a feature that lets me give them my address book?"
No. I don't want to see my friends' Etsy favorites. Illuminating? How about information overload? I can barely keep up with what my friends are doing on Facebook. And I don't want my friends to see my favorites. I might be shopping for them. Or shopping for a guilty pleasure for myself. Or maybe marking something as a favorite not because I want to buy it but because it amuse or appalls me
I just don't see Etsy as a place where I want to connect with people--apart, perhaps, from the craftspeople from whom I am buying something. It's a place to shop. I wish Etsy would focus on features that enhance the shopping experience, and stop trying to become a social network.
So no, I won't be adding any of my friends to my Etsy circle, and if Etsy makes it hard NOT to connect my email address book, I might just have to say goodbye to Etsy.
In the meantime, if I see something on Etsy that I want to share with a friend, or a group of friends, or the whole world, I will do it the old-fashioned way--I'll share a link.
I absolutely agree with your view. Nowadays its hard not to unwittingly connect various online accounts together. I spent a good 20 minutes just setting privacy settings on facebook last week after I discovered that I had unintentionally linked my youtube account with facebook. I don't think my Facebook friends and family really wanted to know that I had watched an hour of various guitar finger exercise tutorials and the music of Danny Kaye. :)
Posted by: Susan Brock | February 09, 2011 at 01:00 PM
I shudder at the thought of all the peculiar things people could learn about my reading/web surfing/viewing/listening habits if I let every site I visit link to Facebook.
Posted by: Donna Andrews | February 09, 2011 at 03:06 PM
Totally agree!
We belong to PaperbackSwap.com and I recently got an e-mail asking me to "friend" someone.
As it is I have plenty on my hands trying to keep Bob's PitBull Pals Club straight and being friends with a pack of pit bulls is about all I care to handle right now.
Obviously there are any number of groups who seem to have a burning desire to acquire more friends.
Regular old fashioned pen pals were much more interesting in many ways, but I'm perfectly happy to have e-mail pals as well. I just don't think I'm ready for 10,000 plus new "friends", who really are collecting because there is a strong possibility that no one wants to really get to know them in person.
Patti
Posted by: Patti Best | November 07, 2011 at 11:33 AM
Impressive blog! -Arron
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