Report: Etsy learns from Big Data for improved offers

Brooklyn, N.Y. – Etsy Inc. reportedly employs Big Data and artificial intelligence systems to better target individual customers with personalized offers. According to the New York Times, Etsy uses tools including an open source machine learning framework called Conjecture, as well as an open source Apache solution called Kafka and in-house Hadoop, to monitor real-time data for fast processing and storage.



Analyzing more than 500 individual consumer signals, including dwell time on specific products and Web navigation, Etsy is able to offer more accurately personalized search results and product recommendations in real time. Other components of Etsy’s personalization system include Scalding, a library written in the Scala scalable programming language and built on top of the Cascading web development platform, which helps developers write programs for the Hadoop MapReduce processing engine.