Etsy recently launched “Gift Ideas for Facebook Friends“
Etsy.com describes the feature as follows:
“The Gift Ideas for Facebook Friends tool gives shopping for friends and family a new twist by connecting with Facebook to find gift ideas based on their public profile information. When you connect to Facebook using Gift Ideas, Etsy can suggest items to you related to the likes and interests of your Facebook friends.”
Great! I don’t have to work quite as hard coming up with Christmas gift ideas for Jeff! Let’s see what Etsy and Facebook suggested I get him:
Interesting, we have some nice accessories that relate to some class novels and embroidered toilet paper. Would I give any of these things to Jeff as a gift? Most likely not. This has not accomplished the task of making my Christmas shopping list easier to figure out.
Etsy Gifts, Netflix recommendations, Amazon recommendations, or other similar search and recommendation sites, all have a major issue. These features don’t have lifeworlds and can never have the context that we has humans have. These sites are built in a very structuralist way: does the key phrase “Barack Obama” appear in the title of an item on sale? Yes, put it in the results. No, don’t put it in the results. However, building search and recommendation results based on this binary opposition misses a lot of the key contexts. Someone who likes Barack Obama most likely won’t use toilet paper with his face on it — the connotations of that just don’t quite match up to real feelings about Mr. President.
Now as a shopper, I can look at these results and know that I’ve never seen Jeff in dangly earrings and he most likely won’t hang a crocheted Obama tapestry in his office as it would clash with his current decor. Because of my lifeworld and my interpretation of Jeff’s lifeworld, I can make a judgment on the appropriateness of a gift. This falls in line with the phenomenological perspective.
I want to take this one step further: how do we construct the identity of a person through applications like this? Jeff did his part by making a publicly available list of things he likes or is interests him:
This isn’t a holistic view of Jeff, but it is one that he constructed as a way to represent himself. This profile screen shot is only a fragment of Jeff. Etsy.com/gifts takes a fraction of this fragment by only displaying 11 of his many interests listed.
In modernism, the self is seen as static and unified where as in post-modernism the self is fragmented and is continually being constructed through remediation, appropriation, and construction of fragments. Initially, computers were designed for efficiency, and unity but as they become more ubiquitous, they have become “universal media machines” (Manovich) where information is fragmented and we must use them and our knowledge of culture to construct our understandings.
When one constructs an online profile, they pick fragments of who they are and post them online. There is a disconnect between who they are in a profile and who they are in real life. What I see on Etsy.com/gifts for Jeff does not do an accurate job of portraying the Jeff Bardzell that I know. Sharon Turkle wrote :
As we stand on the boundary between the real and the virtual, our experience recalls what the anthropologist Victor Turner termed a liminal moment, a moment of passage when new cultural symbols and meanings can emerge. Liminal moment are times of tension, extreme reactions, and great opportunity.
I don’t feel like etsy.com/gifts is using this liminal moment of self-identify as an opportunity. It isn’t exploiting the possibilities because it is stuck in its code, where ones identity, although initially constructed by themselves on facebook, has been distorted and reduced to a point where it doesn’t really grasp who a person is, what their interests are, or how to shop for them. Etsy.com/gifts doesn’t know that I am Jeff’s student, that I’ve never seen him with dangle earrings, and doesn’t know the connotations of toilet paper with someones face on it. It doesn’t know who Jeff is as a whole, or who I am as a whole, or any of that. Sure, it’s fun to play around with, but it doesn’t accomplish its intended goal of finding gifts for someone.
Special thanks to Christian Briggs and his i310 material from Fall 2008, I hope I didn’t butcher it too much 
8 comments
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November 30, 2010 at 1:56 am
jeffreybardzell
I’d like the Barack Obama crochet tapes, please. I don’t know what they are, but they are the most expensive things suggested and I like pricey presents. To go with my “class novels,” you understand. Ta ta, mon cher!
November 30, 2010 at 1:58 am
jeffreybardzell
Also: I won’t need any embroidered Jane Austen toilet paper, as I still have several rolls of GOMS toilet paper in my cupboard.
November 30, 2010 at 1:59 am
Katie O'Donnell
I think it would be lovely in your living room: http://www.etsy.com/listing/31648662/barack-obama-crochet-tapestry?ref=gifts&ga_search_query=for:509105731&ga_search_type=&ga_page=&order=&includes%5B0%5D=tags&includes%5B1%5D=title
November 30, 2010 at 2:07 am
jeffreybardzell
Oh it’s not “tapes” it’s “tapes…” as in “tapestry”! OK, that makes more sense. And uh yeah, that would totally go in our living room.
November 30, 2010 at 5:33 am
juntaoyu
The etsy.com/gifts example reminds me to think of artificial intelligence in computer science field. In current society, people try to develop computer application as an intelligent visual person. It is expected to be treated as a friend and to help solving problems. I guess etsy.com/gifts is on the way. However it isn’t enough for providing shopping ideas by analyzing the public profiles of online identity. The profile of online identity “is separate a static signifier, it is from what it signifiers, and through this separation, it can also lie”. In order to understand more about online identity, we probably dig more on texts they post on the wall. “Performance is identity.” Combining the static profile with active performance, there is a chance to get closer to Jeff’s appropriate gift.
About Amazon recommendation, I don’t know how the strategy works. But it reminds me to think a classic case in economics field. According a statistic report, people who went to supermarket bought beer always bought diaper at the same time. So base on this result, the manager decides to put the beer and diaper together in the store, it is very popular and successful. This kind of typical customer is new father. they come to the supermarket to buy beer and diaper at the same time. I think it may be similar situation in amazon recommendation strategy. Maybe not.
November 30, 2010 at 4:39 pm
robertjbegley
Wow, Katie. This is AWESOME. I think etsy.com/gifts does try to take it further than amazon and looks at your facebook profile for likes and interests as opposed to amazon recommendations based off what you search for/buy.
You could also look at this via music recommendation services like Pandora.com and Grooveshark.com especially since that’s based off of music you immediately choose.
Cool post.
November 30, 2010 at 6:49 pm
Sarah
Juntao mentions “performance is identity” and I think maybe that’s what Amazon is trying to get at with the “this was a gift” feature in it’s recommendation system. Shaowen’s Amazon shopping cart example is fantastic, btw… I was thrilled to see personal experience used as research evidence – yes, it’s valid! So performance could also mean, what we choose to purchase, what we actually listen to, and what we do with our purchases. (Maybe Amazon should add a category for “I hacked it” or “I used it for parts in my Arduino project”)
December 6, 2010 at 9:18 pm
Etsy Gifts: Round 2 « Interaction Culture: The Class Blog
[...] in Interaction Design, Phenomenology, Structuralism | by Katie O'Donnell I want to expand on my previous post about Etsy Gifts. I’ve been thinking about this some more and I want to pose the argument that Etsy gifts is [...]