This year seems to be off to a strong start for Israeli-based cloud Web Development platform Wix if their prohibitively expensive advertising slot at Super Bowl LI starring Brit badass Jason Statham and their fellow Israeli superstar (also Wonder Woman) Gal Gadot is any indication of their stable online business. In addition to their freemium model for users to create their own websites, they’ve also opened their own Wix-only market for web apps built on their own software development kit, featuring booking engines, photo-sharing, blogs and music playlists among numerous other functions that can be added to spruce up Wix-made websites.
The company also made several minor acquisitions of other independent net developers, and their latest subsidiary in this vein is something they haven’t quite got much of yet: from the graphic art design corner, none other than the American artist/designer/fan community and display platform, Deviantart.
Gaining expertise
Wix.com Ltd. bought up the Los Angeles-based “online art gallery” for $36 million, sure that the platform’s staff and operators will enable them to build on their own active social community based on their main web development product, thus leading to an increase in traffic with potential new users or advertising viewers.
Wix President Nir Zohar hopes that their acquisition of the colloquially nicknamed “DA” with its 40 million registered members (and 325 million individual uploaded original artworks) can help strengthen their own user base. “Their brand is extremely strong,” he said in an interview. “We have 100 million users, but we don’t have the same kind of community in terms of having the tools and ability to understand how to get people engaged and upload content to the same extent that they do.”
The resulting merger of systems looks to be something of a win-win situation for the respective users of DeviantArt and Wix. Upon full integration of their platforms, DA artists (called “Deviants” in-community) will be able to create their own websites on Wix platform in order to more personally feature their own artworks; on the other end, Wix users employing artwork on their sites can post them more easily on DeviantArt.
Brand retention
Although now wholly a subsidiary of Wix, DeviantArt will keep its own branding even as their new parent company helps their growth as an art social platform along with their own. Furthermore, DA co-founder and CEO Angelo Sotira is now a member of the Wix management team, with its HQ at Tel Aviv.