"Our portfolio company Etsy operates a market for handmade items. Etsy has been operating for over four years. For most of its life, Etsy had little to no email communication with its buyers. In the past six months, they built a number of email services and now email is one of the top traffic drivers to the site, passing popular new traffic sources like social networks, blogs, and communities."

Rex Hammock post reiterates the point that everything old is new again. Love the reference to the Memex.

Commercial real estate situation is looking ugly. h/t to Lex for the link.