Earlier today, Wix.com announced its acquisition of DeviantArt, and I want you to know how incredibly positive this development is for our community, for the platform, and for all artists who haven’t yet become deviants!
Earlier today, Wix.com—a leading cloud-based web development platform—announced its acquisition of DeviantArt, and I want you to know how incredibly positive this development is for our community, for the platform, and for all artists who haven’t yet become deviants!
We need to talk about the elephant in the room. You know, the one that’s been sitting on us for the past couple years. Since we’re all about the art, maybe the elephant was made out of origami and it was nice and colorful, but it was huge and tough to work around. For these few years, we've lacked the resources to tackle the issues that mattered most on DeviantArt, to launch the features we really wanted to bring to the community, and to deliver the full power of online presence and branding to artists in the way only DeviantArt has succeeded in doing.
I am excited to say the elephant has left the room.
This is where art starts and where art grows. With the addition of the resources, skill, innovation, and energy of Wix, our community can and will explode even faster than it has in the past, and we will become more inspired, magnetic, and audacious than ever before.
The collective, universal understanding of what DeviantArt is and how it operates won’t be lost. We'll just be able to do it a lot more efficiently, with the resources, staff, and data-driven know-how to best serve each and every member of our community like never before. All of the DeviantArt staff will stay, plus more will join us. Very soon, you’ll begin to see the kinds of changes we have all talked about and exciting ones you never expected.
The first time we met with Wix, months and months ago, it was just to talk about an advertising deal. I was surprised that the top management of Wix were there, and within a few minutes, they started talking about what a huge influence DeviantArt had been on them and on what they do, how deeply they love and respect our community, and how excited they were to geek about DeviantArt. It became obvious that we had found a real partner—real friends for the mission ahead.
Later this year, DeviantArt will celebrate 17 years on the Internet.
17 years of creation, kindred spirits, and inspiration brought to life by our rich community of art and artists. 17 years skating along the bleeding edge of feature innovation and all the controversy it brings. And whether you're a longtime member or you've found us via search engines or links in artist bios all across the web, there's a magnetic pull that keeps our community vibrant with life.
UPDATE: There's been some confusion around wording used in 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.
