As a member of the deviantART community, you would all be so proud to listen in to the discussions that have taken place during the process of building Groups. Over the past year+ in development of this project, I've watched our team grow in many very important ways that I consider critical to the next 5 years of deviantART's strength and longevity; we absolutely must keep the love and the passion for this place scaling along side the growth of the staff. And the way we do that is through the proper training of developers and project managers and management by providing quality exposure to the way we make decisions and why on behalf of the community.

And the best way to communicate our passion for this site to all of you is through our product decisions, and our user experience and interface. No matter how many posts we make like this or other blog posts, nothing gets more attention than what you see when you use the site. And if what you see in what we build doesn't reflect what you need and what you want as a member of our community, then it doesn't quite matter what we say beyond that, does it?

I just want you to know that I'm proud, and I know that you'd be proud if you could attend these calls. The finishing touches are being added to the Groups system over the next few weeks, as wizards and guides and faq's and news articles are being prepared for release. Finishing touches in development are often the most challenging part. In fact, sometimes we joke that the last 10% is 90% of the work.

It's no secret that this is by far my favorite project that we've undertaken here at deviantART; and as lead customer watching Groups come together in its near final form brings chills.

The Passion & Skill of our Community + The Quality Integration we've done within the walls of deviantART + The Core Mission of Groups to deliver a comfy and fun Collaborative Environment for deviants to engage each other in public and private settings = Incredible and I think revolutionary potential results for the Arts at large.

This is every bit the reason all of us work so hard to serve this wonderful community. And it has been a blessing to prepare this technology for you in the years it has taken to reach this quality state for the product. We're doing as I've promised throughout the years; a quote from my bio written many years ago:

Most importantly we intend to take our time to do it right. For the first time in history there is connection and communication between artists and fans on a massive scale. deviantART represents a breakthrough for the promotion and exposure of otherwise stranded artists in all corners of the globe. Our job is to make sense of the possibility, and craft it in a responsible manner.

And that's what I'm here to do along with the strong team we've assembled here at deviantART; until the job is done.

I've always truly meant those words and I thank you for the opportunity to serve all of you in this capacity.

kthanxbringgroupsnow.

One very excited Ninja,

note: private log. official deviantART info found on #hq

$mccann and I reviewed the logs earlier tonight and these share links have an entirely negligible impact on traffic or revenue or anything like this. (less than 1%) - the share links have made a big splash of discussion on the site; but they're far less interesting according to our analytics review. however!! lots and lots of traffic comes to deviantART from facebook, twitter, digg, and other sources. usually from people manually sharing art works. the reason the share links didn't effect this much is because sharing is unbelievably easy even without the links.

at any point we could squash all the discussion about share links on deviantART by implementing all three solutions suggested by the community;

1. sharing enabled
2. sharing disabled
3. sharing disabled - deviation available only to logged in members

we don't think 2. is even relevant to the discussion. but the truth is, we're not trying to squash all the discussion about share links either. it is really healthy for us to collectively talk about these matters, and if share links bring it about then so be it. lots of good concepts have been voiced by members and lots of discussion about how to protect yourself has also sprung up. some of the suggestions are really great! some aren't. but what matters is much good discussion about the single most important issue that artists face on the Internet today.

the very positive response to 3. will probably mean we'll implement that ability soon. 2. is still up in the air; people find this funny because 2. is actually how things have been for ages and suddenly reverting seems to not be an option.

fact is, if your art is available on the open web, sharing is occurring. if nothing else, the share links are there to remind you of this. and that's an important dynamic to be conscious of. this idea that the share links encourage sharing is actually a bit like splitting hairs, (i say this factually and especially in light of the traffic analysis). and so allowing you to remove the share links simply allows you to be in a state of denial about the way in which people culturally use services like facebook, etc. - sharing is what it's all about guys!! and you're all out here posting cool artwork? of course people want to tell their friends about the cool thing they saw on deviantART. there's no way to discourage that. sharing is so easy on its own, that the share links are almost redundant! (again, proven by the stats review)

leadership is to take heat when you know what's right for your community. even if some are upset, suggesting we're not listening or don't care, we intend to do what's right for the whole and not necessarily just react for the sake of looking like we're doing something.

there's nothing we care about more here than this community. we dedicate our lives to it tirelessly and we love it, you, and even this debate to pieces. at least i know i do, otherwise i'd just leave issues like this solely to the comm ops team to cope with ;D - after 9 years of many similar matters you'd think i would by now. but you know, love makes you crazy about all the details. besides, it was getting eerily quiet and happy around here.

so there you have it, all this debate and the actual effect of these super hot share links is minimal at best.

but the important thing actually *is* the discussion; we're all learning a lot. we will keep reading and listening, and update you with further developments on #hq -

Again, these were my personal musings and not an official thing of any kind.

-- A

yesterday during the live broadcast for the birthday festivities i entered in to a jelly bean eating competition with ron... some of you may have seen this.

after consuming 150+ jelly belly's, i won the competition and as a result julie had to dance on the HQ conference table to rick astley's "never gonna give you up" for 3 minutes.

there are youtube videos and photos of this floating around, but I'M TOO SICK TO DEAL WITH FINDING THEM FOR YOU.

I TYPE FROM BED.

WITH SAD BELLY.



P.S. DO NOT EAT 150 JELLY BELLYS.

What's up! Just wanted to send some love out to deviantART and I figure I'll cover the fact that I'm headed to comic-con in San Diego tonight, =JaninaZ is on a panel and I'm hanging out with a bunch of folks and attending a mini-devmeet. Hope to see you there! I might stay an extra day if there's lots of festivities. So if you know of some shenanigans, let me know here.

I had a great time at the Los Angeles devMEET, not sure if you saw the photo from it...



I'm sure there will be an update on #hq soon.

Groups are super-coming-along for public launch, with #SydneySyders live and running, and HOPEFULLY ~depthCORE running soon too, but I can't get +ekud on the phone with the International differences, ACK! +ekud!!!

Anyway, laughing at;


Super thanks for capturing 2 million page view shot goes to *AinuLaire who I met at the meet and she was awesome.


And the roflcopter of teh day goes to: