Event created by richardmurray
This event began 01/29/2026 and repeats every year forever
MY PROSE BEFORE THE ARTICLE IN QUESTION
When I think about what I read from @Troy the owner of AALBC and then from Wannaby the CEO of Deviantart. I realize the assessment of websites has an interesting history. First, what is speculation. Speculation is a thing that looks. In finance this doesn't mean even financial assessment, it means those with the power to rate or rank different items in the market place decide on their own agendas what has value or not. The Website formerly called Twitter(TWFCT - pronounced twofist), has the largest expanse of small text blocks, of any website. but does it really make any money? Deviantart is speculated at less value than TWFCT but is it really? I am on TWFCT as well as Deviantart and if I am blunt, TWFCT has no value. 99.99% of the content of TWFCT is trash, daily ramblings that are usually repeats. While Deviantart is mostly art: photographs of sewing-crotchet-sculpture-cosplay -and many other physical craft /screenplays/poems/photographic arts[black and white or color]/fractal art. Deviantart for me is one of the few websites i actually enjoy for itself. Twitter's strength is the volume of users,like tiktok, like facebook and other members of the meta clan of websites. But very little quality in their posts. But the speculators for websites don't bother with post quality, they bother with volume of users.
If my experience getting others to create has an result, it is how hard it is to get people to create. People can complain/bitch/argue/yell through the internet easily. That is done a lot and treated as natural or positive in most places online. But getting people to actually create, use their imagination. Build something with more than just their pulpit passions is very challenging, in my experience. So... I end my prose saying to all to assess the quality of where you are online. Yes, the fiscal environment allows for fiscal assessment of websites to be dysfunctional or imbalanced because it has no rules. Like with the evaluation of stocks and many other things, the speculators are not presenting a balanced fiscal truth but an agenda driven scenario to keep wealth or value in certain spaces or ways. It is that simple.
Citation
THOUGHTS FROM THE CEO OF DEVIANTART
DeviantArt turned 25 this past year and celebrated over 100 million registered users. To be precise we’re approaching 110 million users!
That is no small feat for an online art community founded in 2000, born on the early web, predating Facebook, Reddit, and other social networks, and stubbornly remaining the devious nexus of the internet for artists and art lovers from all walks of life and places.
It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, and we’ve faced our fair share of challenges along the way. But as we celebrate our quarter century and step into the next phase of our journey, I can proudly say that DeviantArt is more alive and vibrant than ever before.
I joined the company nine years ago following the Wix acquisition - first as COO, and for the last four years as CEO. I want to share a bit about where we started and how we’re doing today, especially for those who might’ve seen commentary about DeviantArt from people reacting from a distance, rather than from experience.
“But, someone on the internet said that DeviantArt is… dying.”
It’s a convenient web troll narrative. It’s also dead wrong.
Let’s address this ridiculous nonsense once and for all. There has been no “downfall of DeviantArt,” nor any mass exodus. Quite the opposite; today, the community is larger than ever.
Around the time of the Wix acquisition, we had roughly 36 million registered users. Now, we’re approaching 110 million - more than 3X growth in our user base. Let that sink in.
As we wrap up our 25th year, let me be abundantly clear:
DeviantArt hasn’t just survived. DeviantArt is growing faster and more deliberately than we have in a long, long time.
After years of rebuilding, we have officially completed a full transformation: of network, product, and business.
As you may have figured out by now, I’m not going to sugarcoat anything in this post. I’m planting a freaking huge flag at the top of the peak we’ve climbed.
And the best part? The story is just starting.
First, the hard truth: The network DID decline… for too many years
For a long stretch in the 2010s, DeviantArt wasn’t growing the way it should have.
The decline wasn’t a single “exodus” moment where everyone left overnight. It was more like a slow bleed: daily network signals gradually trending down, year after year, after year.
Here’s what that looked like in our core network signals from 2013 to 2019:
(Network decline: Daily Unique Watchers and Favers, Jan 2013–Jun 2019)
Alongside the declining network, our business model wasn’t anything to brag about either. Most of the business revenue came from third-party ads, essentially “renting out” creators’ art to earn pennies on ad clicks that ultimately just sent users off the platform and worsened the bleed.
That period matters because it sets the context for what comes next:
We weren’t dealing with a community that disappeared. We were dealing with a platform that needed rebuilding - technically, product-wise, and strategically - so that the community could thrive again.
2017-2025: Nine years of rebuilding, in three phases
Phase 1: Stop the bleeding (2017-2019)
With the Wix acquisition of DeviantArt, a new era began. The priority was blunt and urgent: stabilize, modernize, and reverse the decline. That’s what drove Eclipse: a new core experience, stronger foundations, and a push to make DeviantArt feel relevant and usable again.
And yes, some people still miss the old “dA.” But nostalgia isn’t a strategy, and it definitely doesn’t scale. The platform was outdated, suffering from a lack of innovation and investment that held the network back.
Like it or not, DeviantArt Eclipse is what kicked off the network turnaround and regrowth.
Of course, no platform is perfect. We're realistic that Eclipse had its issues, and we've spent the years since relentlessly correcting mistakes and iterating based on community feedback.
Phase 2: Rebuild the network (2019-2023)
After Eclipse launched, we iterated relentlessly. Product and UX improvements, alongside continued significant engineering and ML infra investment, helped pull engagement back up.
A new generation of creators and art lovers found their home on DeviantArt. Starting in 2019, daily active users on DeviantArt began climbing steadily, and core network signals (including submissions, watches, comments, and faves) shifted into consistent, sustained growth. And finally, in 2023, we completely removed third-party ads from the platform.
Remember those same core signals that declined for years? After all our blood, sweat, and tears, they turned - and by the end of 2025, fundamental engagement actions like “Watch” (following a creator) and “Fave” activity aren’t only back; they’re trending up with sustained momentum.
This is the part that matters for anyone who thinks “DA is dying”:
A dying platform doesn’t steadily climb in the fundamentals of a creator network. A dying platform doesn’t rebuild trust with long-time members while becoming appealing to a whole new generation.
That’s exactly what we did with DeviantArt.
From June 2019 to December 2025, DeviantArt saw a 4X increase in Daily Unique Watchers, and a 2.5X increase in Daily Unique Favers.
And here’s the full arc: down (2013-2019), then back up, and now building unstoppable momentum.
(DeviantArt Network Growth: Daily Unique Watchers and Favers, Jan 2013–Dec 2025)
Phase 3: Monetization becomes an engine (2023-2025)
Over the last two and half years, we did something that has changed the trajectory of the platform.
We stopped treating creators' monetization as a side-set of isolated features and started treating it as a core part of DeviantArt’s value proposition: building a real creator economy powered by a true creative network. That shift went hand-in-hand with the decision we made back in 2023 to remove ads completely. Instead of promoting advertisers, we decided to promote our monetizing creators.
Seems obvious now, but when you generate billions of page views monthly and need to pay expensive AWS bills, quick ad money isn’t easily let go.
Make no mistake. It has been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made: tying our success as a company to the success of our users.
Today, DeviantArt makes money when our artists make money.
While the IGs and TikToks of the world are still chasing ad clicks and selling your data, we're betting on our artists, the way a true creative network should.
There’s not a single day I look at the platform and don’t think, “Good riddance to f*cking ads!”
Helping creators succeed is a much better focus and mission, and one that we are very proud of as a company.
Monetization: We didn’t just experiment, we proved the model.
This 25-year anniversary is a symbolic moment, but the transformation is measurable.
We proved that creator monetization works, not as a side feature, but as an engine. We moved from “this should work someday” to “this works now,” with real, sustained growth behind it.
In 2025, creators sold over $23 million on DeviantArt, 11X more than in 2022.
In fact, in 2025, creators sold more on DeviantArt than they did in the previous FIVE years combined!
And the most important part is what it signifies: DeviantArt is no longer rebuilding just to become sustainable. We’re scaling from a foundation that works, a foundation that’s rock solid.
(DeviantArt Creator Sales, 2020–2025)
The final elephant in the room: Let’s talk AI art
DeviantArt was founded as a home for digital creators, deviants of traditional art, back when digital tools were still controversial and digital art was not considered “real art.” Since then, we’ve always been a home to all creators and all types of art, and we’re not about to change that now.
Over the last few years, AI technology became available worldwide. In 2022, we were one of the first major platforms to embrace AI-generated art.
This was a deliberate choice, made with the conviction that it would expand access to creativity, welcome new types of creators, and become a vital tool for the next generation of artists.
But we didn't stop there. We were proactive in establishing necessary standards. We introduced clear directives and community guidelines, starting with tagging of AI art for transparency, empowering our users to control what they consume and to curate their experience. These early actions set a benchmark, and many other platforms have followed.
Boy, we got A LOT of heat. But, we were also 100% right. Since then, we have been seeing waves of new creators leveraging this tech and co-existing with traditional digital artists, and the lines between them are starting to blur.
We have no plans to stop and will continue to champion all our creators, whatever tools or tech they use in their creative process (obviously as long as they abide by our policy and the law).
It’s in our name. We are home to all deviants and all art: every style, genre, and creator
DeviantArt has long been one of the world’s largest creative communities, and we’ve always been proud of the range of art our creators make here. You’ll find the classic pillars of digital creativity - photography, illustration, painting, design, fan art, comics, and concept art - as well as the more devious corners of the art world: manga, cosplay, kinky, and mature artwork.
There’s a saying: “We’re not everyone’s cup of tea, we’re the champagne.” But the truth about DeviantArt is different: we’re the tea and the champagne - and yes, the milkshake, matcha, and tequila too. You get it, right? Name your drink, DeviantArt has got it. A full-spectrum home for creators across every style, genre, and vibe.
What do I mean by full spectrum?
In 2025 alone, creators submitted close to 100 million deviations across approximately 150 genres and major categories.
These pieces were tagged with over 3.8 million different tags, a testament to the incredible breadth of creativity on the platform.
We don’t hide that spectrum. We celebrate it. Because creativity isn’t one aesthetic, one culture, or one comfort zone. And for anyone trying to reduce DeviantArt to a single label: that says more about their lens than about the platform.
Running a massive UGC platform at scale comes with its challenges.
We’re also realistic about what it means to operate a massive UGC network at global scale. When you host millions of creators and billions of interactions, you inherit the same challenges every major platform faces: content moderation edge cases, bad actors, spam, scams, and occasional fraud.
In a way, it’s an unfortunate byproduct of success: growth attracts more creativity, but it also attracts more bad actors attempting to exploit the system.
We don’t pretend those issues don’t exist. We see them, we measure them, and we’re relentless about eliminating them - improving detection, tightening enforcement, and investing in the systems and teams that keep DeviantArt safe, fair, and creator-first.
So deviants, if you’ve been away, consider this your invitation back home.
DeviantArt has always been more than a gallery. It’s a living network, a place where creation, discovery, and belonging collide.
So whether you joined last week or in 2003: submit a piece, watch an artist you admire, leave a thoughtful comment, or add something you love to a collection. And if you’re one of those people who occasionally thinks, “I should log in to my DA profile again sometime” - do it. Make it this week!
The network isn’t “coming back.” It already has.
BIG time!
After 25 years, the party is on, and you’re welcome to join.
2026: We’re not slowing down, we’re scaling
After years of foundational work, and after proving both the network momentum and the creator economy, we’re entering a new phase with no constraints.
We’ve leveled up and are ready for this stage. Now it’s about scaling on all fronts.
You’ll see us keep pushing the network forward, growing the creator economy, and compounding the value of what’s already working.
And yes, we have a few surprises coming in 2026.
Not vague “someday” promises, but tangible actions that will truly expand the canvas for our community, breaking down language barriers and enabling new ways for creators to connect and earn through physical expressions.
More community. More creation. More ways to grow. More ways to earn.
Your turn (I genuinely want your comments on this one)
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When did you first join DeviantArt?
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If you left at some point - what would make you stick this time?
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What’s one thing you want us to protect at all costs as we grow?
Be devious. Onward and upward.
- Moti
POST URL
https://aalbc.com/tc/topic/12377-a-quality-of-websites/
PRIOR EDITION
https://aalbc.com/tc/events/event/635-economic-corner-32-01282026/
NEXT EDITION
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