How Manage Your Bookmarks Online (or How to use Del.icio.us)

Many of you probably already know how to do this. However, i’ve found much more people who still use their browser bookmarking tools. If you’re in this situation this post is for you.

The good guys at CommonCraft have published a new video on their Plain English series. Bookmarking in Plain English explains how to manage and share your bookmarks online.


The video is focused on using Del.icio.us but any other social bookmarking site like Magnolia or SAPO Tags can be used.

Once you start bookmarking online you’ll ask yourself how on earth could you manage all that information before.

August 9, 2007 | Tags: , , , , | Leave a Comment 

Social Shopping at Etsy

Social shopping site Etsy gets funding from friends. From Esty’s blog:

We’ve been growin’ darn fast and that takes a bunch of resources to keep up with. To help us keep pace we’re happy to let you know that we’ve got some new allies, notably: Caterina Fake & Stewart Butterfield, founders of Flickr; Joshua Schachter, founder of del.icio.us; Albert Wenger (was president of del.icio.us); Payman Pouladdej (friend and cheerleader); Union Square Ventures.

There’s an interesting article on the website of the early stage venture capital fund is participating on the funding. The article explains why they are backing up Esty. From their website:

This is a low friction marketplace where buyers and sellers can transact without overhead. But it’s also a fanatic community where users flag goods that aren’t handmade and get them taken down quickly. It’s the kind of place where one artist seller will build a logo for another’s store just because they want to help buid the marketplace.

Put simply Etsy is a site that let’s people buy and sell all things handmade. But Esty is much more than that. It’s inovative features like color navigation, product tagging, profile and feedback page and (like a social network) and a personalized shop url that provide users with an online marketplace where the conversation is happening.

Etsy logo

With only 10 months Etsy numbers are impressive. 10,000 sellers, 40,000 buyers and 100,000 listings. Already more than 70,000 items have been sold on Etsy.

 

So what makes Etsy so special?
Esty uses Flash in an amazing way and besides having a lower fee than eBay, they also have a simpler fee structure. This is all important, but Esty has more than that. Etsy has built an impressive community of users. Users that help each other build personal online shops for their handmade things. Users that talk to other users. Users that leave feedback. The Esty Team has even put up a Town Hall meeting where users can discuss ideas or vote on new features. Again there’s a conversation going on. People are interacting with each other. They are enriching the social context and relevancy in which selling and buying takes place. This is Social Shopping.

If I use Stowe’s three tiers model:

    1. The individuals: authors and creatives that want to sell the things that they are handmaking.
    2. The social network: up until Etsy there was no place on the net to specifically sell things handmade. No place that made it easy / enjoyable to search, navigate & communicate with other authors and artists. At Esty people can build their own personal shop and they can add people as favourites showing their appreciation and (sort of) rating them. People interact with other people at Etsy.
    3. The market: up until Esty there was no online marketplace where artists could have a dedicated website to sell their handmade items. Etsy has a lower and simpler fee structure than eBay. Etsy connects proud sellers with interested buyers in the niche market of handmade stuff.

Esty is showing that The Revolution is already taking place. To me it is showing that this model has a future. I want to be part of it.

June 8, 2006 | Tags: , , , , , | 3 Comments 

  • about

    andre_ribeirinho_t.jpg My name is André Ribeirinho, I'm an entrepreneur who lives in Portugal
    More about me. Contact me.

  • my startup

    Adegga - Social Wine Discovery


    Adegga is a social wine discovery service. The idea is to take the complexity out of wine and allow people to discover wines based other people's choices.