spyed

How's it going around here? At a glance, it appears that the recommendations team is doing a fantastic job with the home environment. The quality of stuff I'm interested in is way up- all fresh and recent. I don't see much AI artwork, which was really over-taking the place for a moment.

How's everyone feeling these days?

I've had a fun break. Didn't know how much I needed it.

Dearest Deliciously Devious DeviantArt,

Our community is not only the largest community the Internet has ever seen; I’ve traveled around the world and met so many of you, and through all of my interactions at Comic-Cons, World Tours, Deviant Meets and random gatherings I’ve always said that the very special bond of creativity that binds us all, actually results in a very caring and sweet group of people. Our community of Deviants are also the best, kindest, most sincere people who have ever congregated at such a scale under one umbrella.

I’ve been the Shepard of that umbrella for 22 years, and that has been my greatest joy and my greatest professional love. I’ve tried through all of it to remain centered on the principals and care that each of you have instilled in me, and I’ve tried to push forward standing behind the projects that I felt were the best aligned with our values as a community.

The entire journey of DeviantArt has had its many chapters, this past 5+ years at Wix have been excellent, and the unwavering support we’ve seen from Avishai (CEO of Wix) and Nir (President at Wix) has been incredible allowing us to push forward the big changes that DeviantArt has needed in order to go forward into the future.

On the broader Internet compared to the year 2000, where no one (let alone artists) had proper distribution channels, monetization opportunities, and a clear path to follow to find success; the year 2022 is absolutely astounding in terms of progress for artists. I’m so proud that our humble community might have contributed a bit to the new world that now exists. We lived in a world where being an artist meant certain financial demise.. the starving artist… and today artists thrive and achieve success at incredible scale.

The mission at DeviantArt is to Entertain, Inspire & Empower the Artist in All of Us. I’ve been feeling very inspired lately to branch out and explore my own creativity and to deviate from my norm.

To achieve this, I’ve stepped down from the CEO role at DeviantArt, and into a personal development role for a while. I’m grateful to Moti Levy Wannabby (DeviantArt’s NEW CEO!), Liat Karpel lollycavalier (DeviantArt’s relatively NEW CMO!!), to @Chris my co-founder and second full timer ever who was critical to our success, along with The One and Only @Heidi who will both soon outnumber my own years as staff at DeviantArt. The relentless Sasha @randomduck, and the rest of the wonderful members of the DeviantArt management team and overall team— From B.I. to U.I. & U.X., Help Desk & Moderation, A.I. & Search through to Operations, Sales & Marketing, & to the hardest working product team there is; DeviantArt is in excellent, capable, caring hands with passionate minds.

I am grateful. Please always give our team, and our new CEO Moti Levy, your full support.

All my love, still here forever, just enjoying and sharing deviations.

— Angelo

Aka spyed

I went to the Whitney Museum in NYC recently to check out the Jasper Johns exhibit. I'm a big fan of his work and I wanted to better understand his twists and turns during the 80's and 90's. Incredible exhibit!

The elevator is HUGE and really awesome at the Whitney..

🥰

This isn't Jasper Johns work but anyway it's me checking stuff out

We exited through the gift ship and... We've all heard the expression, "Seeing the world through rose colored glasses", right? Well I had no idea they were such a great life hack.. the Whitney sold these Color Therapy Glasses..

... and they really work! Especially the magenta ones are just incredible for making the best of a gloomy day. If you've never tried it, I highly recommend a pair. Especially if you're sensitive to gloomy days!

I'm not trying to sell products here, but if you want a link on Amazon here it is here it is. There's nicer versions out there but these are $11. ($25 at the Whitney hehe)

About a month ago we visited NFT NYC to see what all the hype was about. Ran into Gary Vee and Steve J, great to catch up.

Einat & Jules ... we're all pretty happy to be out in the world after this long and cold corona winter..

myself, Liat, Jules, and Moti in Times Square..

Crazy to see all of NYC taken over by NFT's. A lot of force behind the movement, a lot of money and celebrities and companies. Still a very polarizing topic, but we still need to learn about it, right? Doing a lot of learning this year...

Most of you are in a DeviantArt world with two Watch products. The old Watch, that functions like an email client that you remove what you've seen, and keep what you're still reviewing. And the new Watch (off of Home) that is more of a search based feed.

This mixed world isn't meant to be sustained forever. We're very well aware that this complicates the experience. But we're also aware of the gaps between the products, and we're working to bridge the gaps.

There's a lot more to do beyond this that we're simultaneously tackling. Profile Galleries, the new Sidebar, Post feeds, links to tag pages, Home (For You) improvements, iOS & Android updates/alignments, Mobile Web updates, submission process flows, Notes, the new Chat, Profile Improvements, Fav/Collect improvements (making collecting much more fun/easy), Deviation page improvements, Premium Galleries, more powerful For You systems, Topics improvements, New Writer work, Literature support, Group Admin improvements, Group uplifts, ... to name a few! {There's a lot more I'm not naming.)

But I specifically wanted to touch upon Old Watch & New Watch with this journal for anyone who happens to read this..

The New Watch approach is far more powerful in the long run, it provides features that the Old-Watch approach (literally) can't offer. To put it bluntly: The Old Watch can't learn anything about you, so it always relies on your manual effort to get through it. This can be totally overwhelming. But on the bright side, Old Watch gives you a loving connection between you and the people you care about. You don't have to miss a beat, and this counts big time for many of us.

We have to bridge the gap of that feeling in order to make New Watch the winner. In the meantime, we maintain both. The New Watch actually works better for newer users, and for many of our older members who maintain a more superficial connection to DA. Since the launch of the new DeviantArt, the new feed approach has grown Favorite actions, and +Watch actions by a leap especially because it has helped a large segment of less active folks become far more active.

We know that the New Watch doesn't yet facilitate a caring connection between you and your Watchers. The Red-Dots help to tell you that there's new stuff, but the feed doesn't show you which things are new when you get there. When you comment & favorite, the feed doesn't adequately reflect it. So the next time you visit, you have a hard time remembering what you have and haven't seen.

This is double damaging to Literature, because thumbnails for Literature are not as visually descriptive.

The feeds need to remember what you've seen, what's new, what you've interacted with, and they should even let you filter that stuff out so you can see just things that need your attention.

But once we close the gaps, and we're working on that, then we begin to see the power of search-based feeds. Filtering by Deviants, seeing Tag clouds & Group associations of your watchers, easily learning of relevant events happening in the community and providing invaluable insights into your community is suddenly not only possible, but very much a part of the plan.

In the coming weeks and months you're going to see a lot more feeds on Home, from your Groups, from Tags that are relevant to you. Suddenly you'll have access to feeds of Journals & Status updates, and you'll feel far more connected to the many corners of DA...

.. Right behind those changes are the updates that bridge the gaps with Old Watch. And they should take our collective experience to new heights.

The New DeviantArt has been a first big step towards a new summit, unlike the monolithic rebuild of DA which starved the old site of updates, and produced one giant release. We're now releasing very big, very meaningful improvements on a far more regular basis.

Keep checking up on team Journals for site updates, and look to your Notifications area for updates of bigger changes.

-- A