I’m finding it really interesting how the term ‘Folksy’ has been used recently especially around the current Presedential election campaign in the US. Just look on twitter for who’s talking about Folksy, it’s kinda interesting. Sarah Palin has become the flag bearer of a Folksy ‘way’ She is a Folksian! Maybe we should make her an honourary member if only for the great SEO work she’s done for us :)?

image: jay pendergrass (via)

But this raises an interesting aspect of language and etymology, the history of terms and how their meaning changes. In the UK Folksy is tied up with folk music and ‘traditional’ cultural practices. Folksy in the US has far greater currency than in the UK and is used to denote an “earthy”, “of the people”, quality. This seems to be being used negatively in the campaign by the educated and political elite in the US where Folksy has been used as a rather derogatory term to mean “unsophisticated”. How do you see it? What does it mean to you?

Sally from the Manchester Craft Mafia and a Folksy ‘super-user’, has put out a call for makers at a Christmas Market the Craft Mafia are organising in Manchester. Looks interesting. This is it:

Which for those people using screen readers and / or for those who don’t want to squint this reads:

Join our Manchester Craft Mafia Christmas Markets @ The Whitworth Art Gallery

• Saturday 13th Dec 10-4
• Sunday 14th Dec 12-4

Stalls cost between £13 and £25.

Sounds fun. Go to their blog for more info. We’ve got another market to announce (I haven’t forgotten Mary!) which I’ll do soon…

Came across Yasuko’s work yesterday on Folksy. Isn’t it beautiful? She has a range of crocheted ‘dolls’ that just ooze personality, they feel like little people (can you anthropomorphosize inanimate things?). Anyway, this brings me on to the latest round of Featured Sellers. We have:

• Yasuko’s dolls
• Lin’s wonderful fabric accessories – they’re so full of ‘texture’, you want to touch them
• British Cream Tea’s hilarious and quite brilliant replica’s of classic British food stuffs
• And finally, Helena Carrington’s eye catching illustrations (and cushions made from illustrations) and photographs inspired by her trips around Europe.

Now, we’ve been rather eratic in how we’ve been dealing with Featured Sellers on Folksy, partly because we’‘ve been testing the water and seeing what ‘works’. We’ve now updated how we manage Featured Sellers in the FAQ so you know what makes you eligible and how they are chosen. To save you going to look this is basically it:

• You need to have four or more items for sale
• Images of the items need to be of a good quality
• Four featured sellers are chosen every 3 weeks by Folksy staff and…
• The four will be chosen as representing a variety of different types of work on Folksy

Finally, British Cream Tea’s Egg, for no other reason than I just think it’s majestic.

Right, off for a late breakfast….

UPDATE: breakfast over and I’ve just bagged Sammy the bear…. he was too good to resist!

It’s only 24 days or (as at 10am today) 566 hours until Halloween. What could you build in that time? Let’s see:

• 70% of a subaru rally car
• 4% of a G.55 World War II fighter plane
• Not much of the 170 million man hours taken to build the Channel Tunnel
• Or this card replica of the ‘Bird’s Nest’ stadium in Beijing (with 4 days left over to admire your work)

So, what could you make? We’re going to be promoting Halloween items (things tagged with ‘halloween’) so have a think what the kids (and big kids) would like …

So, the lines have closed and the stars have been counted. Down at the Howies store in Carnaby Street, our helpers have been busy packing away the wonderful items from our Howies competition. I wish I could say that I had an envelope in front of me with the winner's name in it, but truth be told, the name was actually just whispered down the phone to me a moment ago.

So without further ado, the winner is...

...the She's Got Bottle! Apron from iris+lily handmade.

Congratulations from everyone here at Folksy - we think it's a deserved winner. We especially like the fact that the material has been inventively recycled from a cotton twill curtain!

We'll be in contact with the winner and everyone who had a shortlisted item shortly to give you your prizes, and the items will be returned to you just as soon as we've negotiated the Post Office obstacle course queues.

And don't forget, once the items are returned, they'll be available for sale from early next week (provided the makers don't decide to keep them for themselves!). So if any of the items take your fancy, get ready to snap it up before someone else does!

Cracking title that. A good filter which says “this is going to be a bit technical and so may not be for me”. Anyway I want to address something which some of you have raised in the last couple of months, namely the keywords on item pages, those words which describe your item, but when ‘clicked’ bring back everything on folksy with that keyword or tag. These things:

A few people have emailed to say how they don’t like it that shoppers can easily click away from their item to other things. I want to address this by arguing how the design and the architecture of the site supports buyers and sellers and that a collective solution is one that will benefit individual sellers too.

So, this is a typical example of the ‘complaint’:

Seller

Those random keywords distract buyers and encourage them to leave my shop! when people are in my shop i want them to stay there. My keywords should be in my shop only.

Folksy

The keywords are actually generated by the items you use to describe your item and are designed to help the buyer navigate across items they are interested in across the whole site. So, if you produce handbags the keywords would help them find handbags from your shop too and navigate across the site. Now, you might not think this is good but actually it does support you because it means users can easily get to your item from someone else’s item. It makes the site easy to use and if the site is easy to use then people will use it and buy things. Our research has shown that it benefits everyone to have the site architected in this way – buyers and sellers.

Seller

But why not provide the keywords after check-out? That would keep people interested to have a look at something else.

Folksy

We do a lot of research for many clients looking at exactly this issue and what we currently have supports the buyer. In the “research” phase of the buying process people filter a “product set”, a set of products they like (there are very few ‘spontaneous’ point-of-sale type purchases on a site like Folksy). This ‘filtering’ is done within categories or in keyword browsing and to do this effectively people need to be able to get around the keyword or category easily – that is through “horizontal browsing”. Now, you might not think that this strategy supports you but if we design the service to support buyers then they will buy. People only buy what they like and making it harder for them to find things will not make them buy your things – it will just make them leave the site altogether. So, you may see it as a distraction, we believe buyers see it as helpful and that site sales will benefit as a result.

A good analogy is with the supermarket shelf. Things are organised by brand but they are all put together – baked beans for example. By allowing customers to see all of the same things in one place and find them easily you increase the likelihood of a sale across all of those items.

So, does this make sense? I appreciate it may seem counterintuitive to give people links away from your page but Google have been doing well out of telling people to go away for a while now :D What do you think? One of the things we may be able to do going forward is prioritise the shop’s items amongst all the other items when clicking on a keyword. But it would be good to have your thoughts on this issue first. Leave comments here or on the forum – thanks :)

And it’s also Friday. This is a Friday-day-kinda-post. Someone kindly wrote to us today to ask if she could use Folksy. People don’t usually ask, they just do. However, amongst the things that this person wanted to sell were these:

and (I) wonder what folksy’s views are on willy warmer type items? I attach the latest which is in the form of a brooch, I also do keyrings and “life size” Christmas themed ones

When you’ve picked yourself up let us know what you you think the policy should be? Answers on a postcard, or in the comments

I’m all for a soundbite :) Those pleasant chaps over at O’Reilly (who do makezine and craftzine and lots of other great stuff) gave us an interview. It may help you to understand where Folksy is coming from and going to. Then again it may not.

We believe that with a little bit of effort most people could create things themselves. Our Make section which launches this month (which is similar to the Instructables) aims to show people how to make things so they don’t have to buy. We’re not talking the Large Hadron Collider here, more screen printing a new t-shirt or producing a lampshade.

linkage to wordage

So, a few of you have seen the wonderful display in howies. Amidst all the Folksy stuff that was shortlisted is our logo in wood. A chap called Fin made this. We found Fin by trawling through the vast (like 3!) listings for wood carvers and sculpters in and around Yorkshire. He wasn’t one of them but was recommended by them and we quickly discovered why; he’s good.

He works out of a studio above a greasy cafe near the train station. This unsavoury (see what I did…) exterior is great because you don’t then expect to find yourself in this cavernous space chock full of wood and machines and stuff. The sort of place that makes you feel like a child, where you just want to play. It’s been one of the great ‘ups’ of doing Folksy, meeting lots of people who make things and are skilled and talented in a way that you don’t usually see (at least if you’re used to office life like I am). Anyway, we weren’t allowed to play so we thought we’d show you a little bit about “how” Fin made the logo (the time lapse starts after a brief interview where Fin talks about why he made it like he did):

If that was all a bit too fast then you can see the output here:

And here is the time lapse on it’s own:

The logo is currently in the howies store and will probably end up in our London back office as they tend to get a better class of visitor than our Sheffield office, although the staff aren’t nearly so good :o

nb. It should be noted that the actual logo was created by LOVE in Manchester who we ocassionally work with. A belated thank you to Emma, Adam and Alf over there (waves)

It's been a while but we now have badges for you to use. If you want the code to embed in your blog then see the full page on folksy. We've got totally different opinions in the office about which we like so, the question we want answered is, which is your favourite? Leave your answers in the comments :)

The big badges (200px x 140px) :

The small badges (124px x 79px) :

The folks at dopplr, a place to record and share your trips, are growing a ‘tache (a moustache) for charity (testicular cancer). We saw Matt’s ‘tache was looking a bit patchy and so we thought Lupin’s awesome felt ‘tache would be the perfect facial ‘foil’ for his public speaking events. Here it is gracing their office nabaztag:

image: moleitau.

Anyhow, it’s all for a good cause so we’re sponsoring the ‘tache growing by donating all the listing fees from this week (21st – 28th Sept) to the cause. You too can sponsor his ‘tache yourself, or just list more things this week to help Matt and encourage his Tom Selleck-esque facial heroics:

image of Matt Jones: Richard Moross

Del Monte says… You remember those ads? They were pretty good weren’t they?

So, David Hieatt, the man (founder) from howies has chosen his favourite items from the Folksy longlist from the competition. We had around 45 items submitted which is great considering the timescales were tight and none of you (none!) do any sport at all so were floundering with the brief initially! Anyway, the shortlisted people / items are:

Bbel has got two in and wins the Michael Phelps Folksy award ....

cloudhopping saddles in on her horse …

lusummers has her wonderful “dog sick” collage…

Claire has this fab howies girl…

Sharon has her amazing apron…

Helena camps it up…(sorry, it’s been a long day and frankly the puns are for my own amusement)

Lucyplayer makes it with her ‘simple’ illustration …

Littlechook’s tremendous teatowel cleans up the tail …

howies picked 9 items for the display. We’re contacting you chosen one’s now to arrange the logistics of your stuff getting to London so please check you emails and better still drop us a mail with your contact phone no. This is turning all very tiswas, isn’t it?

Well done to you all and thank you ever so much for submitting your work. Whilst this is a trial we know that it’s already been a success so we’ll be doing more in the future and giving you the opportunity to show how great you all are to a wider audience. If we had blankety blank chequebooks and pens we’d be handing them out now.

We can see the finishing line of the howies competition. Have a look to see what people have submitted and if you’re planning to enter then get your skates on, howies will be choosing their favourite items for the shortlist tomorrow lunchtime.

Iris and Lily have this lovely apron in for the comp. Good innit?

And then we have this by lusummers.

How cool is that? This should be on the shopping list of every husband / boyfriend in the land but I rather think it’s more likely to be on the shopping list of mums / girlfriends and a welcome present from RELATE:

‘a day in the life’ is the rambling monologue of a housewife (not a million miles from myself ;) juggling with household chores and sorting out the kids, answering the phone while cooking dinner and worrying about the economy – but at the end of the day when the jobs are done, you can escape from everyday worries by going for a run, a bike ride or for a swim – where you’re alone to think stuff through or think of nothing at all – and certainly not about the phonebill or the mountain of ironing that needs doing.

I think if Lu wins we should organise for that money to go straight into a spa treatment and a day away from the dog sick.

So, this is where the stuff will end up. We’ll be collating the shortlisted items and secreting them around the Carnaby St. store from Thurs evening and then on Friday this week. If you’re in London come and say hello and take a look… Jane will be helping to curate your stuff and managing the lo-fi voting mechanism. Jane has curated retail outlets and museum exhbitions before so it’ll be interesting to see what she does with such an ecletic range of folksy stuff.

image: hoodrat

Hello. We’ve been busy lately giving Folksy a bit of an ‘upgrade’. You might not see all the improvements (most are under the bonnet so-to-speak) but the more obvious things are:

• A shiny new blog template (if you’re reading this is RSS then well, you’ll just have to imagine it)
• A new homepage (for ‘unregistered’ people) to reflect what Folksy is about to the uninitiated, you know like you comb your hair for the first date (and possibly the second date depending how things go), well that was our aim
• Altering the navigation on the “your account” page. This should be more intuitive now. Please say it is.

That’s it. We’ll let you know when we’re next tinkering and giving her a wash.

Another entrant to the howies competiton. Lucy nails it with graphics:

Neat. I particularly like the inclusion of the washing-line peg. It feels a bit of an anachronism with all the other more modern things there. All hail the peg.