Snarkiness is Alive and Well ...

Change is inevitable, or so they say, and one either learns to accept it, suffer in silence or make a big fuss about it ...  the latter of which is ignored by everyone and so basically you're suffering aloud but no one is listening to you.  
In my viewpoint the Etsy teams are not working all that well, some of them go hours if not days without any activity.   The  Promotions Teams are certainly not as active as other teams nor are they accomplishing the goal that they had been created for.  A far cry from the days when promotions was a part of the Etsy forums and postings changed faster than greased lightening.   
Yes, without promotions the new, scaled down Etsy forums has lost its spark but not its snarkiness. 
At first this move made no sense but now that Etsy has initiated its "Search Ads", it became perfectly clear, at least to me it did.   I doubt that Etsy  wanted the promotion threads to compete with their new form of on-site advertisements, what better way of doing this than to relegate promo to teams and then tell everyone that the forums is closed for any and all promo threads.

Certainly Etsy has gone through a lot of changes lately and though I miss some of the old Etsy I realize that, like toothpaste squeezed from a tube, there is no putting it back.  Eventually the dust will settle and memories of the old Etsy will become little more than a faded memory.  And so we move on.

Recently I opened a second Etsy shop in order to separate my handcrafted jewelry from my beading supplies shop (unfortunately my supply shop has been woefully neglected in this process).  The new shop has been fairly quiet with only 1 sale.  For the past couple of days I've been beading and photographing and today I listed a couple of new items in my shop DellaMessina ... both items are priced under $10 each and I'm hoping that this will generate some attention and possibly sales.

Photos below ... seed beaded Snowflake earrings in white, crystal and silver.

Photos below ... seed beaded Snowflake earrings in white, crystal and gold.

One thing I have noticed about the new, scaled down Etsy forum is that snarkiness is still alive a well. lol   Have any of you visited or participated in the forums recently?  If so what is your opinion of it?  Also if any of you have tried out the Etsy Search Ads, please give us your review and if you think they will eventually turn into a lucrative source of advertising for Etsians?