Man höre und staune: Etsy plant nach einer Phase der sog. Professionalisierung eine radikale Kehrtwende und will wieder zurück zu seinen Wurzeln ("Etsy Is Not about Retail"):
"A day after announcing he would return
as CEO, Etsy's founder Rob Kalin said he would alter the company's
focus away from retail and more on "social commerce" when he replaces
outgoing CEO Maria Thomas.
He will close down the site's gift guides in early January, stating the guides are "a retail-oriented way of merchandising, and this isn't what Etsy is about."
"In social commerce, our focus is on people, not products," he said,
adding that the gift guides don't reflect the values of the Etsy
community."
"Social" und "Commerce" beißen sich extrem. Und Etsy scheint das rechtzeitig erkannt zu haben, bevor es in dieselben (Kommerzialisierungs-)Fallen tappt wie Ebay nach dem Weggang von Meg Whitman (s. Ebay am Scheideweg).
Mehr über das spannende neue, alte Etsy, das künftig auch bei uns wieder mehr in den Fokus rückt:
"I'll be (re)focusing Etsy more on what we call "social commerce," and
less on retail.
To get an idea of what this means, let's look at
merchandising. For a retailer, merchandising means putting products on
display that are likely to sell. In social commerce, our focus is on
people, not products.
It's our job to build tools for you to use, that
help you promote items as you'd like to.
Zugleich will Etsy neue Strukturen einführen:
"Right now, Etsy is structured in such a way that all the product people
work in one area, the engineers in another, etc. People come together
as needed for a project, and then move on. Customer support handles
email q's, and the community crew is in here.
This isn't working well
for us, in terms of building and supporting features. It's too
monolithic, requires lots of meetings, and makes it difficult for the
community to see what we're up to.
Instead, we will create teams
inside Etsy around site features. There will be a team dedicated to
seller tools, a team for community tools, a Showcase team, and so
forth. These teams will support what they build (with extra help if
needed), and iterate to improve things."
Und wenn man Rob Kalins Aussagen richtig deutet, möchte sich Etsy künftig mehr an Facebook & Co. orientieren und die Social Networking Aspekte betonen:
"In a way similar to the gift guides, Etsy's job should be to build tools
that help you make the site what you want it to be.
We need to create a
thousand more forums for people to talk (i.e. groups), and of course we
can't moderate this.
We need to scale back moderation, and focus on
making tools that empower people to moderate things for themselves."
Alles in allem sind Rob Kalins Antworten auf die Nutzerfragen eines der besten Social Commerce Manifeste, die es je zu lesen gab:
"As a board, we believe that focusing on revenue is not what will make
Etsy continue to grow.
We are focused on our service: building the best
tools and supporting this community. If we do this well, revenue will
follow.
Now that we are profitable, we can redouble our efforts here,
and I'm really excited about this. Our success as a company follows
your success as members."
Im zweiten Teil seiner Antworten gibts noch mehr Details bzw. Erläuterungen. Und offenbar haben auch die anderen Gründer auf einmal wieder Lust auf Etsy.