Treasury East

Mellow Yellow
As many Etsians now know, Etsy has chosen to revamp the way the Treasury works.

In the past, the Treasury was Flash based. You had to wait for a specific number of slots to be freed up and then you had to pounce on a spot. You were also only allowed one Treasury at a time. Because Treasury West was open as a testing ground, people, if they were quick enough, could have two treasuries in the two locations.

There was a sense of excitement in getting a Treasury slot. You had to time it and wait. It was like waiting for your favorite team to score. Craftopolis.com even made a Treasury clock to better help people schedule their treasuries. It took a certain level of love and dedication to sit there and wait.

Soon, Treasury Main and Treasury West will be closed forever as we bring in the new generation of Treasury creation.

Treasury East

Daddy's Little Girl
There are pros and cons to TE (as I will refer to it from now on).

Pros
1- It's no longer flash dependent.
2- There are three prominent thumbnails to wet peoples' appetites visually before we ever get into the Treasury.
3- The new format is lovely and you see all 16 spots right away instead of only 12 (though only 12 show on the FP, the bottom 4 items being alternates).
4- Easily and quickly sharable through many websites.
5- All your treasuries are compiled under your user name so you can manage them easily and so people can see everything you've made.

Cons
1- Not searchable yet (they are supposedly working on this)
2- Only Hotness and Date Created are clickable to generate the top listings.
3- Views, clicks and comments are not being counted properly which skews data.
4- Items do not open in a separate tab which can be annoying and time consuming.

On top of those, we have things that people can't decide are pros or cons.

Unlimited Treasuries.
That's right, you can make as many as you like as often as you like. That means you can have half-finished content just floating uselessly in cyber-space.

Unlimited Time.
Treasuries no longer expire...even when they've long out-grown their time. It's now been put on the curators to maintain and/or delete old treasuries. Except that the unlimited TE thing means that people aren't really going to care about maintaining or deleting old content.

In my book those two things are cons but in many others' minds unlimited treasuries is great.

Regardless of sentiment, they lead to two more Cons:
5- It's IMMENSE...there are over 1600 pages already!
6- Your new Treasury doens't last long on the first page of 'Created'.

Bright Insanity
We've been told that Etsy wants TE to be searchable on Google and so that means they can't expire. Basically they'll be a great way to generate links for SEO.

There are a lot of things Etsy needs to do to make TE really great though. They need to make it searchable ASAP. They need to either eliminate or define Hotness because the old algorithms just don't work with an unlimited format. We've already noticed that 'Hot' Treasuries stay at the top FAR too long making TE look boring and static. They need to offer more sorting options than just Hotness or Created. They need to add a 'Skip To Page' box below the page numbers so that one can go to any random spot. Perhaps they even need to make Categories for TE now that there are so many to look at.

As a person who loved the Old Treasury it's taken me a few more weeks to come to terms with this rather boring, static TE. There's no more 'thrill-of-the-chase' in TE. Thankfully I can see the possibilities for how this could be a fun data-base and I can see how this could be a fine companion to Favorites.

So basically, I'll have to get used to it and maybe eventually even embrace it...:)

I leave you with the four TE treasuries scattered throughout this little article to peruse. Clicks and comments are still very much sought and appreciated! Three were made by me and one was made by the lovely Juliejongleuse, a fellow EtsyQ teammate...:)

Made in Quebec
See TE for yourself and think of the possibilities!
♥