Website Builder Wix Acquires Art Community DeviantArt For $36 Million (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Wix.com has made another acquisition to build out the tools that it provides to users to build and administer websites: it has acquired DeviantArt, an online community for artists, designers and art/design enthusiasts with some 325 million individual pieces of original art and more than 40 million registered members, for $36 million in cash, including $3 million of assumed liabilities. Wix said that it will continue to operate DeviantArt as a standalone site, but it will also use it to boost its own business in a couple of ways. First, DeviantArt users will get access to Wix's web design tools to build out more dynamic online presences. These tools do not only cover design, but commerce and other features for running businesses online. Second, 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. The deal will also include putting further investment into developing DeviantArt's desktop and mobile apps. (Today, that desktop experience is based on a very simple, pared-down interface that is reminiscent of the 2000 birthdate of the startup itself.)

Comments

The end is nigh...

[StarryEyed]

...time to move.

And so it goes...

[WheezyJoe]

Dice buys Slashdot, and there was not much rejoicing.
Even weird 4chan's been bought from its founder, and yet is running out of money in spite of being flooded with ads.
This is not a good trend. Has web site hosting just gotten too expensive to keep a good site alive anymore? or is it just a matter of getting too big and popular to keep costs down? DeviantArt is (was) a pretty cool site and community, but experience suggests little hope Wix is going to keep it that way... Wix has to make its ROI. That means the artists probably have to move somewhere else, which is fine I guess, unless it's only a matter of time before the new site gets too expensive to run and either dies or gets sold off.