Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 201 posts

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#11

Post by kijin »

wmeredith wrote: post #9
omn1 wrote: post #3

DeviantArt has always been a nice community. I find it surprising that the price is so low given that they add a lot of value.

Having moved in Deviant Art circles (some time ago, admittedly) I'd say one reason for the low price might be that, somewhat like Reddit, the core values of the community make it challenging to monetize.

Yep, it would be hard to get away with ugly, intrusive ads when your users are obsessed with aesthetics.

I also can't imagine the print-selling business reaching the kind of scale that today's VCs would like to see.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#12

Post by jmulder »

neom wrote: post #8

From 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. F…

Hear hear. Without deviantArt and the incredible support of the community I would have never gotten into product design.

Also, hi

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#13

Post by neom »

jmulder wrote: post #12
neom wrote: post #8

From 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. F…

Hear hear. Without deviantArt and the incredible support of the community I would have never gotten into product design. Also, hi

Jeroen!!!!! Hello!!! Hope you are well and awesome to run into you on HN.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#14

Post by jmulder »

neom wrote: post #13
jmulder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear. Without deviantArt and the incredible support of the community I would have never gotten into product design. Also, hi

Jeroen!!!!! Hello!!! Hope you are well and awesome to run into you on HN.

Haha, I am very well. Yourself? Hit me up on Twitter @jmulder to catch up!

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#15

Post by kijin »

blackhole wrote: post #10

One 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 i…

You 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.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#16

Post by avian »

kijin wrote: post #11
wmeredith wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having moved in Deviant Art circles (some time ago, admittedly) I'd say one reason for the low price might be that, somewhat like Reddit, the core values of the community make it challenging to monetize.

Yep, it would be hard to get away with ugly, intrusive ads when your users are obsessed with aesthetics. I also can't imagine the print-selling business reaching the kind of scale that today's VCs would like to see.

> hard to get away with ugly, intrusive ads

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.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#18

Post by at-fates-hands »

blackhole wrote: post #10

One 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 i…

I had the same reaction.

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.

Re: Website builder Wix acquires art community DeviantArt for $36M

#19

Post by neom »

jmulder wrote: post #14
neom wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeroen!!!!! Hello!!! Hope you are well and awesome to run into you on HN.

Haha, I am very well. Yourself? Hit me up on Twitter @jmulder to catch up!

I deleted my twitter because it's a distracting insular tire fire, however, I'll find you on FB. :)
Post reply on HN