Earthling

In the web industry, you hear the term "user-generated content" an awful lot these days, especially in high-powered strategy and planning meetings. Everybody wants to harness the power of a free and motivated labor force. Lots of companies want to do what wikipedia did, except make zillions of dollars doing it. By "what wikipedia did," I mean creating tons and tons of content and therefore tons and tons of pageviews, for nothing.

Or more often, you'll hear that a company wants to be "the next MySpace." They want to create an entertaining and engaging web playland that users will want to use again and again, so that they can make money by serving ads to them or something similar.

What often follows is a businessperson making up an imagined need. Granted, it's hard to find something that a huge group of people want online, but don't have yet. It's rare that these watershed concepts come along, and they are as hard to predict as underground youth fashion trends.

So when a piece of software comes in and fills a true need for a community, it's especially important to tip the internet cap to it. Etsy is like that to me.

Before Etsy, there were a bunch of talented crafters with a need. These are people who make really neat stuff but don't have the time, interest, or inclination to make a solid, attractive, secure transactional web site. Many of them also don't have the inventory to justify having an entire "store" of their own. And they don't want a store. They just want to make stuff and sell it. Because they like to, not because they want to be the next Urban Outfitters.

In return, Etsy takes some small fees - something like $0.10 and 3.5% - which, if you've been in the retail space, you know is about what you might pay for credit card transaction service alone. Here are the full details on what they ask of sellers.

So just as EBay made it easy for people to buy and sell their castoffs via auction, Etsy makes it easy for crafters to sell and market their wares together. There are still plenty of crafters who prefer to market and sell independently on their own sites, but Etsy has provided a fairly painless alternative. And on the flip side, they have created an excellent user experience for anyone who wants to browse and shop for a large supply of hand-made and distinctive things from different people -- many of whom are crazy and talented enough to make things like a Heathcliff Huxtable dog sweater.