- The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is deviantART.
deviantART is a web site launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Angelo Sotira and Matt Stephens. It aims at providing a central location for artists to display their creations for feedback and public exposure. It puts an emphasis on digital works as pieces of art rather than just desktop eye candy.
It also hosts prose, poetry, photography, Flash exhibits, cell phone art, traditional art, wallpapers, fonts, stock photography, program related tutorials, skins for more than 105 applications and a recently added section for Artisan Crafts. deviantART's focus is placed not on merely being a place to store and retrieve art, but also on providing artists everywhere with a community in which they can interact - providing them with a plethora of interactive areas (like forums, a shoutbox, IRC and weblog-like journal features).
deviantART also has a print service called deviantART Prints (previously know as deviantPrints).
At one point there was also a monthly online magazine known as devMAG, but this has since been discontinued.
On August 7, 2004, deviantART's fourth anniversary, deviantART v4 (aka 'Fournando') was unveiled, with quite major visual modifications (introducing tabs for more modern browsers, among other things), modifications to the message center and a real-time updating flash-based chat room, dAmn (standing for deviantART Messaging Network).
As of January 8, 2005, deviantART has 9,461,281 Deviations (art pieces) with one new deviation (piece of art) every few seconds. It also has over 1 million deviants (users), making it one of the largest communities on the internet.
Criticism
There is some worry amidst the community that deviantART's transition into a more transparent profit-driven corporation (with the newly revamped store and several other revenue-generating enterprises, including more invasive advertisements) will have a negative effect on its community. In April 2003 deviantART was revealed to have been a company from day one (instead of having, for instance, started out as a volunteer made website) and a few features available to non-subscribers (deviantART runs a subscription service that enables enhanced features) were subtly removed August 7 2003 onwards with the introduction of deviantART v3 (aka 'dAve', from a common typo of dAv3). In late 2004 more invasive advertisements were introduced for non-subscribing members.
Historically there have been several uncomfirmed rumours regarding deviantART's usage of uploaded art as the license all 'deviants' agree upon on signing to the website has traditionally been shrowded in conflicting legalese.
There have also been minor concerns regarding deviantART Prints, as its relatively high mark-up benefiting deviantART may be seen as unjust.
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