There are a lot of great platforms for selling these things: Etsy, Shopify, Big Cartel, Goodsie, Gumroad. But generating demand for these things, and helping them get discovered, is a distinct problem on which I don’t think we’ve made a great deal of headway yet. Sellers and retailers are still shouting, or advertising, at people to buy their stuff, inefficiently. The best ones are telling stories and engaging people in conversations, but it takes a lot of work to gain traction. It also takes a lot of money and effort to build brands the traditional way. So a lot of awesome things are being lovingly made and never seen or sold.

Turns out seller-focused platforms may not be in the best position to attack this problem. It may not make a lot of business sense to try. When sellers are your primary customers, you must focus on their needs and keep them happy. Sometimes things that are best for buyer discovery do not make sellers happy. Sellers would not be happy to see other sellers’ items on their website, for example, or on listing pages that they paid for. Understandably so. Whether or not such a thing leads to more sales and more customers is inconsequential. If sellers aren’t happy, they won’t list items on your service.

A website from an individual seller, whether that seller is an independent designer or Macy’s, is never going to be wholly aligned with the interests of buyers. It’s naturally biased, and limited. And from the seller perspective, visitors will be hard to come by unless you’ve done the hard work of building up an engaged following, in addition to all the other hard work.

Amazon is focused on buyers, and will show you things from lots of different sellers, but Amazon is optimized for convenience, and for buying things you have already decided you want. Amazon is not focused on discovery (yet).

I’ve been thinking that maybe what this world needs are seller-focused platforms optimized for selling, and buyer-focused platforms optimized for discovery.

A buyer-focused platform optimized for discovery puts buyer happiness first, and buyers in control. It’s a place where buyers help other buyers discover things, and puts the right buyers in touch with the right sellers. It’s a place where demand for unique items is generated and aggregated, and creative makers of things benefit.

Wanelo is buyer-focused, and has been inspiring euphoria among a growing legion of young females, the same generation I’ve been watching propel Tumblr to new heights.

I see a lot of work ahead, but I know there’s something there. So I’m going to go help Deena and Kristina Varshavskaya and team figure out what that is, then turn it all the way up, in San Francisco.

I’m going to miss Etsy, and New York, and the astonishingly awesome people I’ve been lucky enough to work with these last few years. Etsy is deep in my bones. I see the next step as a natural continuation of that work. And I won’t be stranger :)

Since that time, from all accounts I’ve heard, Facebook referral traffic to these news sites is way up, and has had some unexpected effects. And ever since this passive sharing went mainstream at f8, I’ve noticed implicit sharing patterns being incorporated into new services in new ways. I think the new ways work because they make it clear that implicit sharing is happening, and they’re more closely aligned with social reality.

Path 2 was the first notable post-f8 app to do this by showing the faces of all the people who had viewed a “moment.”

“Look! Danny smiled at my moment, and ten other people have already seen it.”

These are the faces of viewers, not just people who have liked or favorited the thing. By using the app and viewing friends’ moments, you’re sharing the fact that you’re using the app with your friends and friends of your friends.

Color 2 followed in Path’s path, showing the faces of broadcast visitors, and publishing those visits as events seamlessly on Facebook.

But Pinwheel, still in private beta, does this best right now. It shows the faces of people who have found (viewed) each note, and, crucially, allows you to “unfind” a note if this freaks you out.

The sense of control that that “unfind” option provides may be key for this kind of thing to scale comfortably beyond small groups of people who know one another, as on Path and Color.

Highlight takes implicit sharing to another dimension. By simply installing the app on your phone and joining, then continuing to live your life, you’ll automatically send and receive notifications whenever someone with something in common is within range. It allows you to implicitly share your name, location and Facebook profile photos with strangers. No reading, viewing or using required. Just exist!

Path, Color, Pinwheel and Highlight all make the fact that implicit sharing is happening pretty clear. You see people’s faces everywhere, and soon realize that you’re leaving your own avatar trail behind. It’s like a very low-fidelity version of walking around a building and entering rooms where other people are hanging out.

The Open Graph news apps are less clear that sharing is happening, and still seem to violate reasonable user expectations—I think partly because reading a news article written for a mass audience by someone you don’t know is not obviously a social act. Telling someone about it is. Viewing someone’s moment, joining someone’s live broadcast or checking out someone’s personal note about a place is.

If you start from successful startups, you find they often behaved like nonprofits. And if you start from ideas for nonprofits, you find they’d often make good startups.

–from a Paul Graham classic that’s worth reading in its entirety, repeatedly, and keeping handy in your Instapaper account.

In other words, everything that makes the old Treasury unique is related to the fact that it’s a Flash application: its constraints, and its real-time feel. These things are inseparable from its origins in Flash. But at Etsy an entirely new infrastructure for collections is being created, powered by MongoDB.

So we launched Treasury East as a testing ground for a new unlimited Treasury world, where anyone would be able to create a curated list of items, and that curation activity would be rewarded and harnessed as the important signal it is in a marketplace of one-of-a-kind items made by humans. Etsy is filled with things you never knew existed and never knew you wanted. People welcome guidance and clues from other people in this environment.

And the birth of Treasury East has been remarkable. It feels like the flowering of something new and great, as fascinating items and shops are surfaced by people with a talent for finding things.

Because as any collector knows, it’s fun and satisfying to find things, and can be an outlet for self-expression. Here’s a list I made this morning while on a vintage mid-century modern housewares binge (it happens):

Already we’re seeing games emerge organically, some reminiscent of the Etsy Sneak Attack and PIF (Pay It Forward) phenomena, like Treasury East BnR (Buy and Replace), started by Grace of Homespun Handmaiden. BnRs are bemoaned in the old Treasury world but in this new environment they start to feel like a primitive social-commerce life form that might evolve into something more interesting.

OK I’ve started a treasury east that’s a BnR (buy and replace). Basically you can buy any of the items in the treasury and post the transaction link in the comments. I then go to YOUR shop and replace the item you bought with one of your items! It’s a win-win for all involved. This is a great way to promote your shop and support fellow etsians at the same time!

Keeping an eye on the constant stream of Treasury East blog mentions and Twitter mentions for more.

• Tangentine: My Treasury East and thoughts on SEO, usability and opportunities
• Etsy’s Treasury East Rocks!
• “I tried out the new Treasury East feature on Etsy with this Malcolm McLaren-inspired collection from DIY crafters.“
• On Curating and Treasury East
• Treasury East… oh, the possibilities!
• “The whole world of Treasury East is cleaner, fancier, and just screams ‘buy me!’“
• “So, if the new treasuries never expire, why not explore this idea even further? Why not, in fact, create a treasury/inspiration board for each of my items?“
• East vs. West
• Etsy Treasury Tuesday
• “While fears of dilution are real, I don’t think persistence necessarily = creativity, and I’m confident Etsy will refine its Treasury East algorithm until the best of the best surface.”

We just need better ways of sharing, organizing, displaying and discovering these things (working on it!).

Lauren got the search functionality for Datamob up and running, making the site about 1,000 times more useful. Adjustments are in progress but you can subscribe to feeds of search results.

Recent additions: NPR API, BBC Backstage, CrunchBase API, CrunchBase Map, TheMiddleClass.org, geophysically scaled economic data, Walk Score, Lee Byron’s San Franscisco Walkability Map, Toby Segaran’s Industry Browser and a number of resources.

A personal announcement: After more than four years immersed in all things web-, blog- and ecommerce-related at the 92nd Street Y (new look/season/brand launching Thursday)—a place I love and have had the privilege of contributing to while working alongside some truly amazing people—I’m moving on to another amazing place: Etsy. Specifically the product team. And the busiest and Best Summer Ever continues.

Back up and running after a sudden barrage of generous linking from Joshua Schachter, Andy Baio, Jack Dorsey, Valleywag, Boing Boing, Daring Fireball, Download Squad, CNET’s Webware, UTNE Reader, Bub.blicio.us and other good folks.

Servers don’t hold up as well as paper.

• usa
  26
  (52%)
• government
  23
  (46%)
• maps
  14
  (28%)
• language
  7
  (14%)
• business
  7
  (14%)

Recent blips: interactive Voronoi treemaps, basketball data visualizations, Watchdog.net.

Datamob-compliant APIs: MAPLight, GovTracker, AMEE, Project Vote Smart, Civic Footprint.

Coffee table: The Alphabet Abecedarium, Mashups, Miscellany.