Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Also, hi
I am currently drafting what I think could be this generation's dA, improving upon some of its shortcomings and offering new collaboration tools.
If you have the time and think you could provide some insight, I would love to email you some questions about your experiences building that kind of community, because it is exactly the kind of community I wish to serve.
That's Tumblr. Build for the ones after.
At the risk of embarrassing myself, here's what I was up to from ages 15-20: http://a-t-o-m-i-c.deviantart.com/
Incredibly what? =)
I haven't touched my DA account in years, but more because I've stopped drawing than any issue with the site or community. I was exposed to the work of a lot of amazingly talented people through DA, that I probably would not otherwise have seen.
Lots of great people around communities like this back in the day, but then so many of us seemed to grow out of them.
It is the oldest submission not performed by deviant art staff and the oldest submission still online.
Here's the (genuine) QNX boot floppy demo, BTW. Alas, my new laptop doesn't have enough RAM to run it.
I think there's one that's older by url count, but this was the first featured one, and I think second oldest surviving.
Anyway, as far as I could see, that welcome-to-the-community experience was happening to everyone who joined, if they were participating at least. It's bigger now, so it's hard to bump into the right people when you're new, but that same DNA is still there. Read the comments on any popular piece - it's usually positive and constructive. And often extensive.
I don't know if I'm replying well; I feel like this ultimately just sounds like "you had to be there" - but when it comes down to it, I believe the amazingly positive culture is the answer to "what was amazing?"
I deleted my account because a workmate found my lightsaber rotoscoping on DA.
putting yourself out there in this way was also part of the networking aspect, as it was hard to get any attention to your artwork.
as we've seen to this day across a plethora of networks, nobody has come up with a real solution to discoverability in the face of volume, and I fear machines are just going to learn to do it the same way as humans.
Better make a repository of your works, quickly! Who is to say it will be the same site in a few months, or weeks.
The biggest gift they gave me was a little space on their server to run my own PHP site, which I used to rip of all their code and make an online community for DIY punk bands. It kind of exploded in popularity and was so badly coded that I constantly crashed their MySQL server and eventually got the boot. When I went to college I figured programming was the obvious path, but the Java and VB classes they offered seemed so outdated and unimportant compared to what I knew was possible on the web. It really bummed me out on real world computer stuff so I just dropped out of technology completely and played starving musician for way way way too long. Now I'm old and trying to catch up to kids who don't even know a world without social networks...
Hacker News is biased toward DIYing websites from scratch, but WYSIWYG builders like WIx are very important for those who aren't tech-savvy. DeviantArt, in a world where designers must build their own overly-elaborate portfolios with JavaScript and CSS shenanigans to stand out, serves as a good compliment.
The definition may, of course, change over time and it already differs across communities. On the top of my head, I know many freelancers who wouldn't consider you a web developer without good Photoshop skills and many JavaScript-oriented developers wouldn't consider you one if you can't write a line of JS without using a library.
I, however, don't know any significant group which would call a person who can only author on Wix, a Web Developer. Ignoring that would surely create miscommunication and would be considered a wrong or misguided use of the title.
If that's normal for a Wix site, then I would say no, nobody involved on either side of the transaction is a web developer except in the most pejorative sense of the term.
> With 1000s of stunning options, no two website are the same.
"two website" => "two websites"
I will get you, edit button. You cannot escape my patient pointer.
On the other hand, in practice, in the presence of a technology that non-programmers can use to build perfectly viable products, the onus is probably more on the "programming-language-programmers" to differentiate themselves and seek out the challenges that can't be solved by "HTML-programmers". If you as a programmer find yourself in a venue head to head with a Wix'er, you may win a small victory in the battle over definitions, but you will lose the war. If the problem can be solved with HTML/Wix, in most cases it should solved with them.
etc. Currently they only support one level in url making it difficult to migrate my sites.
Exactly what do they mean by that? Will it be opt-in? Will it only cover art that's already under Creative Commons? Will be it all Creative Commons? Does a Wix site count as commercial use? I can't imagine people would be very happy about their art suddenly being available for use elsewhere without their consent.
Hopefully, this is much ado about nothing, and Wix won't do anything terrible, but we've seen technology companies do stupid things before. At the very least, it would be nice if they elaborated on their plans regarding this.
I'm assuming they will present an option for artists to allow their work to be used on Wix sites in exchange for royalties, with the middleman taking a percentage of said royalties.
> DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights in your works or other materials posted by you to DeviantArt (Your Content).
Here's the rest of it:
> 4. Copyright
> DeviantArt is, unless otherwise stated, the owner of all copyright and data rights in the Service and its contents. Individuals who have posted works to DeviantArt are either the copyright owners of the component parts of that work or are posting the work under license from a copyright owner or his or her agent or otherwise as permitted by law. You may not reproduce, distribute, publicly display or perform, or prepare derivative works based on any of the Content including any such works without the express, written consent of DeviantArt or the appropriate owner of copyright in such works. DeviantArt does not claim ownership rights in your works or other materials posted by you to DeviantArt (Your Content). You agree not to distribute any part of the Service other than Your Content in any medium other than as permitted in these Terms of Service or by use of functions on the Service provided by us. You agree not to alter or modify any part of the Service unless expressly permitted to do so by us or by use of functions on the Service provided by us.
But there might be a clause in there where they claim sufficiently unrestricted license to use that content in any way they chose. Not having copyright does not mean that they don't have license to use the content or let their users do the same.
The license is already granted, to DeviantArt.
I could totally see them taking all the CC licenses and open it up as a stock image repository. This could go two ways.
One, they open it up and its a total free for all, and as a Wix user, I can just go take someone's images and use them on my site royality free, which is downright scary.
Two, they take control of all the work that's under CC, involve the artists and offer them a percentage of the profit to use their art for their websites. Or cut out the artists entirely, which I could also see happening. You have huge opportunity to drive a ton of revenue from the stuff that's already on DA.
Why is that scary? It's the point of CC licence. All they'll have to do on the using site is add an attribution (for ex CC-BY-SA).
It's the intention of CC to allow gratis usage and sharing.
Based on the Submission Policy on DeviantArt's site, the essence of the agreement seems to be that as long as the work continues to be on DeviantArt, any DeviantArt site can use it royalty-free under a non-exclusive licence. The artist (or other submitter) is free to remove the work from DeviantArt at any time, and with some provisions about orderly handling the work is then no longer available for use on DeviantArt sites under those terms. The copyright and related legal rights in each work remain with the artist throughout (or with whoever else had them before, but they're not automatically transferred to DeviantArt).
Whether the acquisition means sites run by Wix now count as successors and therefore enjoy the royalty-free rights regarding uploaded works is one for the lawyers, but even if it that is the case, it seems that anyone who objects can simply delete their work from DeviantArt and in doing so withdraw the consent required to use the work on any other sites as well. That being the case, it would seem unwise for Wix to try to pull a fast one here, and a more collaborative approach would seem to be in everyone's interests including Wix's.
[^1]: http://jon-rista.deviantart.com/journal/Very-Concerning-Devi...
https://www.google.com/search?q=site:https://about.deviantar...
This unclearness, plus their in my humble opinion, horribly annoying youtube ad campaign, did not make me ponder about deleting my account for a second.
3. License To Use Artist Materials. As and when Artist Materials are
uploaded to the DeviantArt Site(s), Artist grants to DeviantArt a
worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to do the following
things during the Term:
a) to prepare and encode Artist Materials or any part of them for
digital or analog transmission, manipulation and exhibition in
any format and by any means now known or not yet known or
invented;
b) to display, copy, reproduce, exhibit, publicly perform,
broadcast, rebroadcast, transmit, retransmit, distribute through
any electronic means (including analog and digital) or other
means, and electronically or otherwise publish any or all of
the Artist Materials, including any part of them, and to include
them in compilations for publication, by any and all means and
media now known or not yet known or invented ;
c) to modify, adapt, change or otherwise alter the Artist Materials
(e.g., change the size) and use the Artist Materials as described
in Section 3(b); and ...
The policies only apply for the "Term" in which a user exists and the art exists on the platform.
And it's usually there to protect the website for altering storing and advertising with user generated content.
It always has had the potential to be used for bad, we will see if this time actually happens.
It would be a different thing to grant Wix users the right to take someone's work over to their own sites, I speculate that would require an extension or transfer of copy rights in addition to the quoted policy.
I'd wait and see, I'd expect that Wix won't just lay claim to all submissions without asking for permission or remunerating artists who's works are sold.
If buro9's reading of the user agreement was right, those artists' work was just sold. For 35M.
I do hope that wix.com will do the right thing, though, and limit this to images that their creators permitted to be reused and/or add a feature where wix customers can negotiate with deviantart users over pricing.
a) We can re-encode your images, to whatever format
we need to make the website work.
b) We are allowed to display the pictures online.
If something happens and the internet stops existing,
we'll still be allowed to show people pictures where
we go after the web. We are also allowed to display
pictures not only by themselves but also as part of
a gallery. E.g. in search results.
c) We're allowed to resize, convert to grayscale, etc
so that galleries, search results, etc, all work
the way a modern website is expected to.
That Wix scenario doesn't look all that terrible by the way: imagine deviantart pivoting into some kind of racket machine publishing connections between cringeworthy "early works" and the current employers of meanwhile professional graphics artists, now that would be an evil use of the repository.
https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/deviantart-autodesk-fundin... https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1402519/000140251913...
I can not figure out what the valuation was of DA when it got the Autodesk investment.
I also notice that ArtStation.com seems to be rising on DeviantArt.com but still a way to go: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/deviantart.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/artstation.com
So $36 million/$8 million = 4.5 times sales
So less than a buck per registered userSo around a 4.5x revenue multiple, which doesn't seem bad for a business that isn't growing rapidly(?)
I also can't imagine the print-selling business reaching the kind of scale that today's VCs would like to see.
Deviantart has click-through ads that overlay the content on mobile and a big bright banner for registered users if they are using an adblocker.
It seems they are already getting away with ugly and intrusive.
Is Twitch profitable? Have they had to face a serious copyright infringement lawsuit from a game maker yet?
Right, but a lot of what's sold there is "fanart" that uses copyrighted characters etc.
Most cases these days are predicated on whether or not something is fair use, but don't explore whether or not copyright was infringed in the first place.
All in all, it's good for money to be poured in here, because it means the defense will have adequate legal resources to set the right precedent.
"There's been some confusion around wording used TechCrunch's reporting of the DeviantArt and Wix story.
Their article includes: "...Wix will open up DeviantArt’s repository of art and creative community to the Wix platform, giving Wix’s users access to that work to use in their own site building."
Please know that the DeviantArt Submission Policy, Terms of Service and Copyright Policy all remain the same. Deviants continue to own their own works. In the future, there's a possibility Wix might provide opportunities for you to license your work -- only if you want to -- to more people around the world. And, there will be opportunities for Wix users to join DeviantArt and make the community stronger."
Your weakness can be your strength...
I feel that more and more people seem ok with services just not being named in their local language.
They've released a few videos on YouTube talking about their move to React Native and their underlying infrastructure.
This year we are moving from React to Vue. In parte because we prefer working with HTML + directives than JSX, but also because Vue is more pragmatic and much nicer on beginners and people coming from jQuery.
I find the valuation a little surprizing, but I guess that is what happens when you value an established business on actuals instead of potential. Good get wix.
Shameless plug: I've been stealth-working on an art site for several years, so you could try that out if you'd like. That's at https://www.imagehex.com/.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites
So if the site is making $10m/yr profit, 3 years' revuenue and no expectations of growth means $36m is a fair price.
[1]:https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/wordp...
I truly hope that this chapter will bring the unique magic of DeviantArt to a new audience.
- A "til Hell freezes over" tier Core member
For me the site was at times educational helping explore software tools others used to create their works of art. Screenshots on the other hand were extremely useful in desktop customisation and seeing what was possible to do across OS platforms.
https://petapixel.com/2016/03/22/flickrd-rise-demise-photo-s...
I find flickr with Creative Commons search incredibly valuable.
> Yahoo finance and Fantasy and Sports are MUCH bigger then Flickr.
I did quite a bit of work on tracking down and swatting the malware ads but they were almost impossible to track down and there was no accountability through the ad networks.
(I worked as a developer at deviantArt from 2009 to 2013)
I'd say a website with 100 million members is worth far more than 4x as much as a site with 26.
They used to have a custom file storage back-end which resembles something like swift. That may have been replaced with AWS after I left.
(I am a paying member of DA.)