Reports has been circulating that deviantART Inc has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding. Listed shareholders include DivX Inc.

The new VC that has been pumped into dA has already been earmarked into certain key budgets according to dA CEO, Angelo Sortira. The main being upgraded facilities to increase real space and server space capacities to decrease bottleneck bandwith situations.

Obviously, a loan of $3.5 million needs to be paid back somehow.

One has to wonder how large of a role this has had on the recent launch of the 22 project?

The 22 project has been on the cards for quite a while now and received massive support from the dA back offices and rightly so. A perfect marketing platform to launch the deviantWEAR range into "community" eyes to increase profits and by calling it Deviant's Appreciation Day 2007 has created mass awareness of the sites other income generating services. deviantWEAR has for long been the "black sheep" of dA sales. with an total number of pageviews at the time of writing this being 10,117 in just over 66 weeks. This with deviantART getting a reported 15 million hits a month, one would have thought that any income generating feature would have been punted earlier.

But what does this mean to the user?

For too long users of deviantART has looked at dA as their friendly neighborhood bulletin board. It's time the deviantART userbase comes to accept and embrace what deviantART really is: A global corporation with a 4 million strong client base.

This means that deviantART eats money. It needs to feed to grow. By supporting events like 22 you are supporting yourself as an artist. Arguments like “22 prizes will only go to admin favourites” and “This is just another money making ploy” are worthless in the bigger scheme of things. Yes, the awareness created might make dA richer, but a richer dA means a dA with more web developers, more strategic planners, more servers, more office space, better features, stronger plans, more stable connections, more features, more staff, better service.

All this eventually improving YOUR (and the premuim online art) platform to becoming a better artist.

And remember, dA is not a community website, it makes a few people in nice offices quite rich, but they are rich because they gave you an awesome platform to show and sell your product to the world. Something you could never have done on your own. Support 22 and improve your deviantART.








^{On a more personal note, please dA developers with your new monies, turn our journals into something with more blog-like features. I would really appreciate that.}