We’ve also had lots of feedback about what people would like to see, and just wanted to give everyone an update on what’s planned for the next few months. There’s quite a lot so please read on…

We’re coming out of Beta on 1 May 2010

Folksy has been in Beta since it started and we’ve been working through the valuable feedback we get to fix bugs and make improvements. Although there are still lots of things we want to improve, the system works well now and it’s time to come out of beta (a bit like taking the stabilisers off your bike). The main difference that this makes is we’ll start to charge 5% commission on all sales. The money this brings in will help us to develop, manage and promote Folksy.

To do this we need to make some changes to the way that sellers are billed. These are outlined on the billing help page.

Improving search and organisation

The number of items and shops has really grown in the past few months. We know that we need to improve the search to cope with this, as well as reviewing the categories that are used for organising everything (we’ve made some changes already) and introducing shop sections so that sellers can organise their stock.

We’re also looking at new ways of featuring and promoting interesting shops and items that sell well, and generally showcasing the fantastic things for sale. Wishlists have been a frequent request, so we’ve aded them to the list of improvements.

A better way of finding materials

Materials (or crafting supplies, whatever you want to call them) are a huge part of Folksy but we don’t make enough of them. So we’re planning to create a proper category for them and promote them to make them easier to buy, and in the longer term we’re going to create a separate site / sub-brand of Folksy for materials.

Promotion and PR

The traffic to Folksy has grown enormously in the last 6 months, but we still need to do more to get the word out. Facebook integration to help sellers promote is in development. We’re also looking at search engine optimisation, PR and promotion. The Folksy Festive Sampler was such a big hit that we will probably do another (but not so festive this time!).

Help and site management

We have hired a new admin person (hi Toni!) to help keep the site running. We’re also moving over to a dedicated help system which will help us to manage support emails more easily and create a searchable bank of frequently asked questions. We’re also reviewing the help and guidance that we have on the site to try and make it clearer.

Going international

We are open to international buyers at the moment, but not to international (non-UK) sellers. While opening internationally has always been part of the plan, the feedback we’ve had lately is that our current audience (buyers and sellers) doesn’t really want this. It’s a tricky one, because we’d love to expand, but don’t want to do it at the expense of the people who appreciate Folksy at the moment. To do it properly would involve development work which we don’t want to prioritise over other improvements, so we’ve decided not to open internationally.  However, we are thinking about how the local model could work in other countries (e.g. Folksy Australia) so if you think it would work where you are please get in touch.

Everything else!

We’ve got a designer as part of the team now, so we’ll be reviewing the site design and making sure that everything looks as good as it possibly can. We’ll also review the various processes around the site (like buying or listing) to see if we can make them smoother.

There are always lots of other things that need to be taken care of too, like site performance, quality control, enquiries etc so we’re really doing our best to keep making Folksy better as quickly as we can. These things take time and effort so we’d like to expand the team of Folksy Folk who keep everything going. If you think you could help us with PR or development please get in touch.

And finally…

A big, big thanks to everything who has supported us so far. We are really appreciate the feedback we get (positive and negative) and want to thank everyone who has shopped or sold or promoted Folksy up to now. Onwards and upwards!

So, we’re in the second half of February and as we said way back when, we’re launching International Sales. However, as those that read the email newsletter from yesterday will know, we’re doing this in stages. Initially, we’re enabling UK sellers to sell internationally. That will happen next week (the end of). Why stages? We’re doing this for two reasons: firstly, so that we can test that it works well and get feedback on improving it before we go international; secondly, so we can scale effectively – we’re small and managing support and development takes time. By developing in stages we can scale ‘organically’ and sustainably. Apologies to the international (non-UK) sellers who were hoping to hop on to Folksy this month. We’ve let you down, but we hope you understand why and will use your vast reserves of patience to wait a while longer :)

There are a few things on that initial slate that the beady eyed amongst you will know we did not complete in full. We tinkered with profile pages but did not redesign them fully and you still can’t see how to message a seller without being logged in. We’ll be fixing these things in March and we’ll be sharing the designs for the profile pages and new listing process on the blog, explaining our rationale for the work.

As ever, let us have your feedback via the forum or beta email.

Gestation periods are usually predictable. Hamsters take around 16 days. They’re quick. The MySociety chaps knock out stuff at a ferocious pace. They’re the hamsters. Elephants have the longest gestation period of any land mammal. We’re the elephant of the web world having said that we’d be launching around this time last year. But trying to take some positives from this, elephants are pretty cool. They have laudable characteristics… good matriarchal social structures and er, big feet. We’ve got excuses for not being hamsters of course. In this horribly long gestation we’ve done a bunch of other things, as well as working to develop Folksy.

And so here we are 12mths after our near birth. We’re having a go again. The baby is moving. It’s moving largely because CJ and Russell have been pushing and prodding [can I take this metaphor too far...?]. Thank you. The due date is the 5th July to tie in with the New Designers event in London where 2000 graduates will be standing and smiling, mainly. We’ll be working with some of them and kicking off what will be a *proper* beta launch which will run until London Design Week where we’ll be doing ‘stuff’. A bunch of stuff actually. And this will be the more formal public launch.

We’ll be posting with far greater frequency. However, if you want to chat or find out more then email james at folksy dot co dot uk :)

UPDATE: just confirmed, we’ll be running workshops in a big tent at Lovebox, July 19th 20th in Victoria Park. We’ll post up what we’ll be making and who’ll be helping us next week.

We set up our stall trying to create a living room environment which kinda worked, but what did work was our “make table” where we beavered away making blinkybugs [see below] and Rob being far more technical hacked a Nintendo controller to make an optical mouse and also made an “ambient orb light” which responded to ‘the internet’. What about the internet it was responding has not yet become clear.

Anyway, we had a great time, got lots of good feedback, not to mention loads of beta testers and a possible invite to do a big festival event this summer and I got to have a brief chat with Matthew D’Ancona [albeit unwittingly] which was marvelous. Thanks Russell :) and thanks to all those crafters who helped us to provide goods for the event [Lucia, Alice, Zoe, etc...].

Next on the to do list is to think of another word for Beta which is a horribly overused and useless moniker now it’s a permanent fixture on any West Coast half-baked IPO / VC hungry thing. “Charlie” would be the logical next step and I have a friend with a dog called Charlie and it’s a nice dog, so that’s as good-a-reason as any. But I feel it tarred with the whole Greek alpha geek brush. So we need to think anew. Russell suggested “rough” which I like but makes me think of Martin Parr-esque images of kids in Northern sink estates. Ideas? We could start a whole new movement for services with “aren’t-quite-ready-but-we’re-going-to-shove-it-out-there-anyway” ethos of community led development.

Anyway, hello. Welcome to Folksy. In the next few weeks we’ll be learning and stressing. And we’ll share that with you in the run up to Folksy launching in some form or other.