Tell HN: An update from the new Tindie team
ZH version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.
Dear Tindie Community,
My name is Gongyu Su, and I am writing on behalf of the new Tindie ownership team.
First, we sincerely apologize for the recent downtime and the disruption it caused. We understand that many buyers and community members were left without clear information during the transition, and that this created frustration and concern.
Tindie is now owned by EETree LLC, a Washington State company. Our team took over Tindie because we believe it remains an important platform for makers, hardware creators, engineers, and independent sellers around the world. The recent transition was more complex than expected. Tindie runs on an older technical framework with many connected services, and the migration from the previous operating environment to the new one took longer and caused more disruption than anyone wanted.
We know this was not the experience the Tindie community deserved.
Our immediate focus is to stabilize the platform, resolve payment and order-related issues, and support sellers and buyers through the transition. If you have an order-related concern, please contact Tindie support so the team can review your case directly.
WHAT WE ARE FOCUSED ON
Stabilizing the platform
Restoring reliable access for buyers, sellers, and the community.
Resolving open issues
Working through payment, refund, and order concerns case by case.
Investing for the long term
Renewing attention, support, and improvements for the community.
We also want to be clear about our long-term intention: we did not take over Tindie to let it fade away. We took it over because we believe it deserves renewed attention, investment, and support.
Tindie has always been more than just a marketplace. It is a place where independent creators, makers, and hardware enthusiasts can share useful products, tools, kits, modules, and ideas with the world. We want to preserve that spirit while improving the platform step by step.
Over the coming weeks and months, we will share more about our plans and will listen carefully to feedback from sellers, buyers, and the broader community.
Thank you for your patience and continued support. We know trust must be earned through action, and we are committed to doing that.
Sincerely,
Gongyu Su
On behalf of the Tindie Team
Discussion (41 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
I'm not sure what that means as far as payment processing etc, apparently sellers were all cut off with money owing and still have no explanation.
Also the AI-generated blog post on the Tindie site (under the name/account of assumedly-previous staff?), and the post above that says absolutely nothing about what's actually going on...
It looks from the outside like a Chinese tech blog just randomly bought Tindie, broke the site while moving it to their own servers, and now are trying to figure out how to run it?
If they purchased the site, I get it, new servers, etc. But part of the purchase agreement should have stated that the site continues to be run/maintained for 6 months or so until the new owners have a replacement ready.
(I feel like someone reading HN could have (vibe?) coded a replacement for Tindie by now. I mean Tindie does have the name recognition… kind of?)
It also gives the impression that they have no idea how to set up a staging environment or seamlessly migrate to a new backend with a double write approach. Just spells trouble all around.
Also WHO are the new owners? The "About us" page has ZERO info on them. I wouldn't touch the new platform with a 30foot pole, so I guess it's time to find a new alternative marketplace.
Edit: on https://www.linkedin.com/in/gongyu/ it claims that the company name is "EEree LLC", in the email it's magically "EETree LLC"
https://privatebin.net/?db6418554d9d5728#3NjbsSUYzw227zG5P1k...
This archive never expires :)
> # Announcement
After much back and forth with the community and the team internally, we can reveal a bit more of what's happening. Tindie transitioned to new ownership on April 14. Due to circumstances beyond the control of the new owners, the site was immediately put into maintenance mode. Since then, the process of transitioning the site to new infrastructure and upgrading the aging codebase has been ongoing. The intention was, as I originally thought, to do this seamlessly with no downtime. However, once the site was put into maintenance mode and the transition happened. it was decided to take the time to work on the site and get things up to modern standards. The new owners are genuinely excited about Tindie and what the platform can be. After a year or so on cruise control, we're finally going to make substantial investments in the platform and community -- something which in my humble opinion is long overdue.
# Timeframe
Again, I still don't have an exact timeframe for the completion of this work. I know that is what the community wants to know more than anything, and it's very frustrating that I can't satisfy your answers about that.
I know that the new tech team is working hard with the Supplyframe team to complete all the transition steps and ensure things are done properly.
# Who Am I?
I figured many of you already know me, but my name is Alexander Rowsell. I'm the editor of the Tindie Blog and the social media manager. I've been with Tindie for a few years, and I'll be around for the foreseeable future. I do embedded development work, but I also really enjoy writing about what the community is up to. It's always a blast to go through the newest listings on Tindie to see what people are creating!
I'll be honest with you, I was worried about Tindie over the last few months. I could see that the site needed attention from a professional dev team and was worried the site would break totally before that happened. Well, there has been downtime, but the upside is that the site will be refreshed and ready for the long term. Short-term pain for long-term stability -- that's where we're at.
I wanted to write a longer statement, and seeing as how the Tindie Blog itself is down I figured this was the next best thing. To verify this statement is actually from me, I've signed it with my GPG key - B5CFBEB4EE9FE813. You can verify this signature by getting the raw text of this post, and verifying the signature using GPG.
Generous interpretation - perhaps this is the default for posts on that site.
Less generous interpretation - definitely quite a weird way of posting something, including references to a GPG key, rather than some kind of pre-existing public social media account (which I'm assuming a social media manager would have) or a page on the Tindie domain.
How does this even explain why they "TOOK OVER" Tindie?
Excellent, thank you.
Since my scale is small enough, even if the user forgot to enter the order ID, it'd still work because I could just map the order and payment manually by timing.
If you don't want to create your own order handling website, even a Google Form would work for that. Just get the user to pay you on their own and fill in a form. Then you'd do the payment mapping manually and send them the product.
I mean, this is unacceptable by any metric. Downtime for a platform like this means lost revenue. If Amazon was down for weeks at a time how do you think that would affect them as a retailer? So at this point I can't imagine what the mystery purchasers are getting, certainly not a steady revenue stream? I can't imagine the user data is that valuable for such a niche market focus. Over the coming weeks and months, I will be delighted to observe more embarrassing fumbles from your nameless owners, and whoever you are because I suspect your given name is false as well.
For my project, I am charging the environmental bridge between LLMs and the world; whatever that means.