Yerzies

= users protesting user filtering mechanisms

Description

A case study reported by Springwise, concerning Yerzies, which “lets consumers design and sell their own T-shirts”:

“whereas any designer could originally use Yerzies to sell their creations directly via their own web page, blog or page on Facebook and MySpace, getting listed in the online Yerzies store required being ranked highly enough by the Yerzies community. And that, it turned out, was a requirement early users didn’t like.

Cofounder Scott Killian explains:

“The initial feedback we received from users was very positive, but one reoccurring criticism was the rule we had in place that required designs to be ranked before they would appear in our store. We did this because we wanted to empower our user community to collectively decide which designs were the strongest and deserved the attention. Although our intentions were good, this approach put too many barriers in place for users to list their designs. As a result, we’ve done away with ranking completely. All designs are listed for sale in our store the moment they’re created (unless the design is private).” Yerzies aims to repurpose the ranking concept down the road, Killian added, but for now it’s no longer part of the selling process. “ (http://www.springwise.com/fashion_beauty/no_more_voting_on_diy_tshirt_s/)