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Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M
- baldfat 10y agoWhy do I feel like this is the litmus test for someone to see if they want to save Flickr?
- asleepawake 10y agoNot sure what you mean by that
- wattt 10y agoFlickr is the only part of Yahoo that is worth anything. The question is how much.
- baldfat 10y agoI think the idea that flickr is worth anything is still in question. https://petapixel.com/2016/03/22/flickrd-rise-demise-photo-sharing-service/ 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.
- Grue3 10y agoThe also own Tumblr, you know, the site that pretty much killed deviantArt in the first place.
- joshmn 10y agoHow did Tumblr kill DA? They're incredibly different, though used mostly by the same demographic.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- omn1 10y agoDeviantArt has always been a nice community. I find it surprising that the price is so low given that they add a lot of value.
- petercooper 10y agothe deal will increase its revenue outlook by around $8 million So around a 4.5x revenue multiple, which doesn't seem bad for a business that isn't growing rapidly(?)
- charlesdm 10y agoSince when does revenue matter? That's like selling a car dealership that does $100mm a year for $450mm, when the profit is only, say, 5% per car sold.
- petercooper 10y agoMy point is merely that the multiple seems healthy, but sure, if we do it on likely income instead then it's an even higher multiple that'll be well above typical acquisitions of small online communities or media sites.
- charlesdm 10y agoI think they actually (over)paid (?) a good amount for a website that isn't growing significantly. But hey, public tech companies are held to different standards / analysed using different metrics.
- elsewhen 10y agomany acquirers focus on revenue more than profits because once ingested, the cost-side of the business can change dramatically. according to quantcast, deviantart is doing over 40MM monthly uniques. i suspect it is that reach (and not profit or revenue) that wix is actually acquiring.
- wmeredith 10y ago
- minimaxir 10y agoYesterday, coincidentally, there was a surprisingly silly and heated discussion in a large Facebook group about whether a person who specializes in Wix can be considered a "web developer." (https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackers/permalink/1514102138645266/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/hackathonhackers/permalink/1...) 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.
- egeozcan 10y agoYou are a definitely "person who develops for web" but not necessarily a Web Developer within the context of any community which assigned a specific meaning to that title. 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.
- mcbits 10y agoThe first I heard of Wix was a few months ago when a local news site deployed their new design. The page would be completely blank for 10-15 seconds while it made hundreds of requests for useless little React turdlets. As far as I can tell, they "fixed" it by moving away from Wix. 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.
- yestoallthat 10y agoI thought you were exaggerating, but holy cow... maybe those who disagree can find me a site from http://www.wix.com/explore/websites http://www.wix.com/explore/websites for which that doesn't hold true, because I gave up after a few which were all incredibly abysmal. Yeah, those sites are "stunning" alright. Aesthetically very bland and samey, but technically utterly stunning. I wouldn't even know how to make something that slow without using a combination of bmp images and sleeping here and there for a few seconds.
- neom 10y agoFrom 2001-2007 I worked on helping build the community at dA. Had such an interesting and unique childhood and teenage years due to deviantART (and IRC). I owe everyone from that time a huge thank you for helping me become who I am today. It lost all it's magic (for me) when Scott and Eric Kolb left. Angelo is an absolutely amazing guy and I really really admire him but it was pretty sad to watch the community die. FYI, Chris Bolt the dude who built a lot of the tech there is INCREDIBLY and if you can figure out how to hire him, hire him - afaik he hasn't worked anywhere else in the last 17 years.
- jmulder 10y agoHear hear. Without deviantArt and the incredible support of the community I would have never gotten into product design. Also, hi
- blackhole 10y agoOne potentially alarming sentence in this article is "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." 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.
- kijin 10y agoYou cannot unilaterally change the license on someone else's work. A lot of images on DeviantArt are under very restrictive licenses. 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.
- problems 10y agoThere's also a lot of CC licensed stuff that might already be allowing use for such purposes with the authors not expecting any return from it.
- lambada 10y agoWell that depends on the terms the uploader agreed to. The license displayed for works is, as I understand it, the license that applies to visitors/viewers not necessarily for deviantArt itself.
- DanBC 10y agoThis line is in the current TOS: > 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.
- pbnjay 10y agoI remember spending many hours browsing dA back way back when. There are so many art/design/etc communities now that I'm sure it's getting more difficult to retain users.
- mcjiggerlog 10y agoWhat are some other art communities? I've been looking for a decent alternative for a while
- NM-Super 10y agoPeople typically use Tumblr at this point. It's not designed for art, and it has issues with big images, but it has a fairly active community, so people use it. There's also niche sites, like FA for furries and various boorus for anime fans. There's also a semi-active twitter artist community, although 90% of those people also post elsewhere. 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://www.imagehex.com/.
- reiichiroh 10y agoArtStation seems to be popular.
- nitemice 10y agoWikipedia lists a bunch that might be an option. None of them really have the same purpose or soul as dA though, as far as I can see. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites
- rublev 10y ago"Website builder Wix acquires terrible amateur hentai repository DeviantArt for a $36M loss"
- intenscia 10y agoDA is what inspired me to make my first website. They really pioneered strong community collaboration, long before social networking on the web became cool. 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.
- brusch64 10y agoI didn't know that Wix was such a big business. Yesterday I was joking with a friend about their stupid name and how they can be successful with that name (it is very close to a colloquial term for "to masturbate" in German). I didn't know that hey are traded on Nasdaq and are an Israeli company.
- bhouston 10y agoSeems like a low valuation as they raised $10M in 2013 from Autodesk: https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/deviantart-autodesk-funding/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/26/deviantart-autodesk-fundin... https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1402519/000140251913000002/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml 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/deviantart.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/artstation.com http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/artstation.com
- TheGrassyKnoll 10y ago> "...deal will increase its revenue outlook by around $8 million,..." So $36 million/$8 million = 4.5 times sales >"...40 million registered members..." So less than a buck per registered user
- yoodenvranx 10y agoNot the best choice for a company name. In German "Wix" sounds very similar to "masturbation".
- erelde 10y agoHas there been any development to the Wix/Wordpress story ?
- pmlnr 10y agoNot enough information, what story exactly?
- erelde 10y agoMy bad, this story[1] about Wix "stealing" code from Wordpress. [1]:https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/wordpress-and-wix-trade-shots-over-alleged-theft-of-open-source-code/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/wordp...
- Illniyar 10y agoAs far as I know that saga ended when wix open sourced their mobile client.
- tannhaeuser 10y agoWell I can say wix.com definitely isn't going to fly in Germany (eg. for the same reason that Mitsubishi's "Pajero" vehicle isn't marketed under that name in latin/US America and Spain) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_Pajero
- Sujan 10y agoActually: https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/3d1ux4/wixcom_marketing_story_for_germany/ https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/3d1ux4/wixcom_ma... 160k views on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkAQLw5w1U4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkAQLw5w1U4 Your weakness can be your strength...
- nathancahill 10y agoYour wixness can be your strength...
- tannhaeuser 10y ago"toilet humour" is ... golden
- thecatspaw 10y agoto fill people in, "wixen"/"wichsen" is slang for masturbating. "Du wixxer" can also mean "You wanker" as in cussing at someone
- bastih 10y agoAs often as this comes up, I see know quite a few German people (artists, and people with basic web site needs) using wix. I feel that more and more people seem ok with services just not being named in their local language.
- chrisper 10y agoWell, a city called Fucking (even though it is in Austria) exists. So wix.com can't be that bad ;)
- brightball 10y agoI think the most interesting detail here is that Wix is doing well enough that it has $36M to spend.
- neom 10y agowix and squarespace and godaddy are the new "wordpress site". I ran into a "Squarespace developer" here in Manhattan few weeks back.
- clydethefrog 10y agoWhy? It seems like Wordpress still offers the perfect balance between usability and flexibility. At least that was my conclusion after doing research for an association that was looking to host their own website. Wix options seemed to be very static while Wordpress has a plugin for everything. And it's free while you had to pay for "social media plugins" in Wix.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- neom 10y agoYou're a few degrees more technical than their target demo I'd imagine. For my sister getting her jewellery business going, she was going to pay a local guy $1,250 to stand up a digitalocean droplet and build a custom site for her, I told her about squarespace and shopify - that was that.
- jackcosgrove 10y agoThinking back on all of the fun I've had looking at DeviantArt posts over the years, I'm saddened that it's all only worth $36M. All that human effort...art is a tough gig.
- jastanton 10y agoOne thing I discovered about Wix the other day. They are active on their public GitHub repos and they are have very high quality React Native packages!
- altern8tif 10y agoWix has been pushing the envelope on React Native and are one of the larger organisations who have embraced it fully. They've released a few videos on YouTube talking about their move to React Native and their underlying infrastructure.
- sidlls 10y agoMy only experiences with Wix websites have been completely negative. Slow load times, non-functional interfaces, menus and the like and terrible designs (as in, presentation layout and formatting of graphics and other objects) have been the norm for me. It's cheap, and folks are getting what they pay for.
- pier25 10y agoWe used their react-templates extensively last year and the experience was mostly positive. 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.
- Taylor_OD 10y agoWow. I didn't see that coming. I've used Wix in the past for a couple websites and I enjoy the platform but I am curious how they will benefit from this.
- huula 10y agoThere are paying users!
- dcmininni 10y agoIs there an alternative to deviant art after this?
- NM-Super 10y agoI commented briefly on some alternatives here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13716343
- jxi 10y agoWow DeviantArt has been around since forever. I used it a lot when I was younger. After all these years, it's only worth $36M. That's pretty bad.
- Grue3 10y agoNot sure what's more surprising, that Wix is so big, or that DA is so cheap.
- krapp 10y agoAwesome. This is a perfect excuse to delete my 10+ year old Deviant Art account.
- joshmn 10y agoDA has been around forever. I'm curious what they would have peaked at as far as value goes.
- cft 10y agoApparently prices scale non-linearly with the market share. Wiki says it has 26m members, and yet the price is 1% of Snap. Snap definitely doesn't have 2.6bn users.
- NM-Super 10y agoThere's very few completely linear relationships in all of economics. Economies of scale, especially, are often at least polynomial. I'd say a website with 100 million members is worth far more than 4x as much as a site with 26.
- artursapek 10y agoI spent a lot of time on dA as a teenager. Press F to pay respects.
- grahamo 10y agoThis seems, like most things, it could be good or bad. Wix could choose to launch a Graphicriver / Canva / Adobe Stock type add-on that could help artists monetize their work. Or they could straight up license the work and pocket the money via some legal mumbo jumbo. Hopefully it is opt-in and the first case.
- cahoot_bird 10y agoAbout 8 years ago I got a virus while viewing someone's portfolio on DeviantArt on a page when my computer rebooted. My best guess is maybe it was through third party ads. I've never completely trusted DeviantArt ever since.
- 20after4 10y agoThey have a lot of problems with that. The reason: Most ad networks lump them in with porn sites because they allow adult content to be uploaded. Most major brands won't touch it so the display ads are very low quality and riddled with malware. 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)
- austincheney 10y agoI didn't form my account there until 12 Sep 2000. I was late to the party as the site opened about 6 weeks prior. Before DeviantArt there was Deskmod.com.
- chejazi 10y agoStatement from DeviantArt: http://spyed.deviantart.com/journal/DeviantArt-and-Wix-With-a-Kindred-Spirit-665239030 http://spyed.deviantart.com/journal/DeviantArt-and-Wix-With-...
- porsupah 10y agoSignificantly, they've updated that with a section that deserves highlighting here: "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."
- bookbinder 10y agoI thought DeviantArt would be worth more than $36M.
- DaiPlusPlus 10y agoThe valuation makes sense to me. Their userbase is hard to monetise (I'd wager a large chunk of kids aged 10 to 18 with limited purchasing power - and the adults there are definitely in the AdBlock crowd). Things like premium site subscriptions and print services will only take you so far - and now that we're post-"mainstream Internet" its growth is limited to the rate people are being born and given its anti-establishment streak I don't think the site will last long in China. So if the site is making $10m/yr profit, 3 years' revuenue and no expectations of growth means $36m is a fair price.
- jaleh 10y agoThe DeviantArt platform and community had an immense impact on pushing me creatively in my early teen years and onward. I have not experienced anything like it since. Had it not been for DeviantArt, I'm not sure if I would have pursued my art and design career as early and as seriously as I did. 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
- bluetwo 10y agoWhat did people think of the price?
- sengork 10y agoDA is one of the web's icons and it complemented the rise of CGI extremely well. 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.
- glasz 10y agoalways wondered what dA's stack is. anybody has any insight?
- Two9A 10y agoThey've never made a secret of it being LAMP throughout. There's still some code in there from the original PHP4 site 14 years ago (or at least, there was at the time I left staff).
- 20after4 10y agoVery straightforward traditional LAMP with lots of database sharding and various smart optimizations to handle extreme traffic volumes. 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.
- pluma 10y agoThis seems like one of those headlines that would have been a lot more interesting ten years ago.
- peterburkimsher 10y agoI still have a DeviantArt hoodie and wear it regularly! I bought it in 2007, along with a couple of well-designed t-shirts. I think that those might have been my first online purchases.