But Etsy was always a marketplace. It was never a curation site per se. Unless I'm missing something here? If anything, I see Etsy and Pinterest as much more complementary than competitive.
I, again never really used them, but I think it was likely a case of Etsy not realizing they were pinterest.
People went to see fashion, crafts and home made cool things. They started their own stores and shared in that experience.
Etsy never cspitalized on this. Pinterest, is the opposite. It was meant as an awesome place to find cool stuff, then, while people are admiring it, they did a deal with stripe.
Now Patrick Collison brings them up sometimes in interviews, and both Collisons did a class with Ben Silberman in Sam Altmans stanford class.
So, point is Pinterest attracted all the people who made cool shit. Etsy attracted all the people who bought it.
It's an interesting way to look at it, and I guess I'd never thought of it that way. I'm still not convinced Pinterest and Etsy are substitutes, or at least not that they always have been. But I do agree that (from what I can tell) Pinterest is the more ambitious and strategic company, and that it has Etsy in a corner it can easily choose to close off at this stage in the game.
People went to see fashion, crafts and home made cool things. They started their own stores and shared in that experience.
Etsy never cspitalized on this. Pinterest, is the opposite. It was meant as an awesome place to find cool stuff, then, while people are admiring it, they did a deal with stripe.
Now Patrick Collison brings them up sometimes in interviews, and both Collisons did a class with Ben Silberman in Sam Altmans stanford class.
So, point is Pinterest attracted all the people who made cool shit. Etsy attracted all the people who bought it.
Match point.