This is a response to ~brihana25's journal post. I felt it was necessary. There are plenty of reasons to be angry and confused with the recent events, none of which are reflected by her post. It is full of hearsay, conjecture, contradiction and gross misinterpretation. This kind of crap needlessly fans the flames of anger for no good reason. I've known Angelo for over five years now, and won't stand for this sort of baseless character assassination.

I feel confident that I've maintained my neutrality regarding the current situation. I've done my best to preserve relevant links from her post. That said, here we go...

deviantART was only three months old, and already $spyed was referring to himself as the "corporate entity."

Hell, he was doing that before the site launched. He's the one who's been responsible for making sure there was money behind the site in the first place to make it available for all of us to enjoy.

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "°jark and I have worked together on deviantART from day 1. A little bit after the first year, we were joined by $mccann who created the Sonique MP3 player back in 1998."
then: (Jan. 21, 2001) "I really want to apologize to the entire community, to Jark and to Matteo for this submission agreement situation."

Then - he didn't apologize to $mccann. Now - he doesn't even mention °matteo.

Andrew wasn't a part of the ownership or team at that point. Not mentioning Matt makes sense because it was part of a "brief" history of deviantART. "Brief" as in "relevant to the current happenings, namely between himself, Andrew & Scott."

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "That is how much I believe in this community. I have dedicated my life to it."
then: (Nov. 6, 2000) "I threw the agreement in Jark's direction and then disappeared for the weekend and left the guys to deal with all the crazyness that was spawned as a result of the agreement."

What's the point? That someone who claims to have dedicated their life to something never makes mistakes? Shit, at least he owned up to it and apologized for the error publicly to the community.

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "I was the first person to work on deviantART full time in 2002..."

Um... that's not what °attila said : Behind the Scenes; Who Runs This Crack-house?

then: (Feb. 17, 2002) °attila said, "Not only do I work on deviantART.com full-time, but I am also a full-time college student." and $spyed said, "I run two companies besides helping run deviantART."

So I'm guessing that running two other companies and helping at dA somehow equates to full-time employment, but I'm not quite sure exactly how...

Angelo says "...in 2002." The news post in question was from February 17th. If I recall correctly, it was sometime in mid-2002 to early-2003 that he backed out of other responsibilities to realign his focus for deviantART in a full-time way. More than anything else, this confusion is because of semantics, context and subjective definitions of "full-time."

then: (June 9, 2002) "Our dreams as staff are to work on deviantART full time, my task is to make that possible..." - [link]

And now I'm guessing that if something is a dream, then that means it hasn't happened yet... which would imply that someone dreaming of working on deviantART full-time was not yet actually working on deviantART full-time.

Perhaps ~brihana25 didn't notice that he was referring to himself with other people. Some of these dreams have come true, as there are now multiple full-time paid staff members. Also worthy of note is that he begins his write-up with "deviantART has become my life." This news post was on June 9, 2002.

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "I personally hand built and "installed" deviantART's first 35 servers."
then: (Feb. 17, 2002) "My main efforts on deviantART have to do with a new venture called DA Prints which I'm running point on. I also help with the implementation of new ideas and encourage planning for the future, to combat the negative effects of rapid growth which we are seeing in our wonderful community. Basically I focus a lot on making sure make sure we scale in a healthy manner. I deal with our lawyers, writing up contracts, accounting, our corporate responsibilities and odds and ends here and there where necessary."

Am I the only one who sees not a single word about having built 35 servers in there? I ask you, if you'd built 35 servers for someone, wouldn't you mention that when someone asked you what you did?

I really have to wonder... which 35 servers would those be? The one that crashed every other day during early 2001 [link] or the four that were collocated at the end of September that same year [link] ?

And what about this - [link] - where °matteo said that he and ~grim were the ones responsible for deviantPrints?

The "now" write-up is about what he did (recapping his history with the site), the old one was about what he does (at least at the point that it was written). Angelo built the servers. Go ahead, see if you can find someone to refute that. I'm fairly certain that they didn't install themselves. In "Deviant Art Back From the Dead," the problem was caused by ~jier with a script he was working on for 545 Studios (an honest mistake). The servers at that time were not the property of deviantART specifically. I believe that the servers that Angelo was referring to were the four mentioned in "deviantART is NOT Powered by Hamsters," as well as the 31 that came afterward.

As for the prints, I believe that the service that Matt and Grim were referring to never was released. I have prints from that period, and they were from a much lower quality source. What you can get through dA's current print service is far superior in quality. I can attest to this, as I have purchased hundreds of dollars worth of prints.

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "In the early days, deviantART.com was running just fine without any revenue, because $mccann was sending $gazillion checks out of his pocket every month to pay for the server costs."
then: (Oct. 8, 2000) °matteo said "Jark will be adding banner ads to DeviantArt soon and I want to do this news post in order to explain what this means. It's simple, we need to pay for our hosting, marketing, etc so that this site can remian (sic) up." - [link]

Um... then why the banner ads only two months in? What is money gained from banner ads if not revenue?

"In the early days" is referring to late 2001 (when Andrew's investments were crucial to keep the site alive after original sources of funding were drying up) and on for a decent amount of time after that. Putting banner ads in within a few months of birthday 0 was a defensive measure to lessen impact on those original sources of funding. Note that this was when the dot-com bubble was bursting - any measure to stay afloat and remain an attractive investment was absolutely necessary. deviantART started on a path of huge growth so quickly that the declining ad revenue (look at a graph of internet advertising rates around this time) soon was unable to put a dent in the fast-rising monthly costs of operating the site.

now: "As costs got steeper, along came the subscription and print programs, which were embraced with open arms by the community."

I wouldn't say that. They were met with the same kind of reaction as most things are here - about 50/50. [link]

And also... no mention of °matteo's work with angryshirts [link] ? That certainly qualifies as a revenue maker.

Had ~brihana25 bothered to read into the comments instead of relying on her obviously flawed perception of reality, she would have found that the response WAS in fact overwhelmingly positive. Here's what I found by reading each comment and making tally marks:

Of approximately 416 posts...
...202 were distinctly positive, with people showing various degrees of support.
...45 were distinctly negative.
...30 were neutral or of indistinguishable opinion.
...9 were questions relating to the service.
...110 were responses to other comments, suggestions for the service, or other non-POV posts.
...19 were essentially lamentations about lack of available funds to pay or a method to do so without any stated opinion about the service.
...1 was in a foreign language and I couldn't read it.

Even if you don't totally agree with my ratings of each post, the evidence shows clearly that the subscription service was indeed welcomed with open arms by the community - save a few naysayers.

As for AngryShirts, I can tell you that the revenue stream from that had about as much impact as a field mouse farting in a blizzard. The products were very nice (I bought a few myself), though. That's worth mentioning.

Now, here's the fun one.

now: (Aug. 1, 2005) "The other two co-founders..."

Let's examine that term "other two." If there are two others, then that implies that there are three, right? The two others, and the person speaking who is, by default, including himself.

So according to $spyed, there are three, not two, co-founders of deviantART and he's one of them.

Oh, really?

then: (Aug. 17, 2000) - [link] - the Contact page, featuring only °jark and °matteo
then: (March 31, 2001) - [link] - the Contact page again, with °jark, °matteo, °arc, $MikeyLove, °tack and °attila and listing their functions and titles - °jark and °matteo are named as co-founders, and $spyed isn't named at all.
then: (Nov. 8, 2001) - [link] - °jark and °matteo as co-founders - other staff listed are: °arc, °tack, °attila, `dj-designs, $jsenn, and $MikeyLove. Again... where's $spyed?
then: (June 9, 2002) - [link] °matteo (Matt Stephens): Senior Vice President, deviantART Inc., Co-Founder
°jark (Scott Jarkoff): President, deviantART Inc., Co-Founder
$spyed (Angelo Sotira): CEO, deviantART Inc.

Somebody done give hisself a promotion!

I've already stated in other posts that I've always understood Angelo to be a third co-founder, just in a more private sense. He was never the face of the site. My IRC logs confirm that he was a part of this thing in the capacity that I remember. The co-founder issue is refuted by Scott himself when he later wrote a staff bio that started like so: "It was myself, `matteo and $spyed that founded deviantART back in the summer of 2000." In the interest of being fair, I should mention that Scott claims that this was written under pressure to maintain the "party line." I have no reason to trust or distrust him on this, as there's no way for me to possibly know. I'd be lying, however, if I said that his written account didn't match what I remember. As for the "promotion" bit, there was no corporate structure in place originally. Angelo's official titles came with that.

Through all this time, though, $spyed did have a $ in front of his name, and he did post news... at least, according to this [link] he did. Now, only two of those articles survive in the belly of the Wayback Machine - this one [link] and this one [link] .

Check out the category on that last one very carefully. Since when does deviantART have a news category for "Rock"? And look at the subjects of those articles - Do Britney and Christina Get Along? (oh yeah, that boy was 18 when he wrote that one...), Pimp War and Some Pimpin' Tunes, The Pop-Ups on DMusic, Be Part of the DMusic Team!

Angelo had a $ because he's always been one of the top people, but working on more background-ish items, as I previously stated. The articles you mention were posted into the shared news database (dA, DMusic and a few others).

Do you know what one of the greatest things about deviantART is? They keep records of everything

[link]

Do you see a news post on Sept. 1, 2000 titled "Dinner and Music"? In fact, do you see any news posts at all on Sept. 1, 2000? No. Neither do I. That's because there weren't any - at least not on deviantART. No, that news post was made on DMusic - $spyed's MP3 site (you know, the one he was quoted as saying, "Yeah, I know MP3s are illegal, but I didn't much care" about... but I digress...) - [link] - second article from the bottom.

You'll see something else there too. A news article by °matteo - [link] - which you will also see here - [link] Look very, very closely - identical news posts made at the exact same moment, that recieved the exact same comments from the exact same people.

DMusic mirrored deviantART's news posts, at least at the beginning. It stands to reason that deviantART did the same with DMusic, at least after a fashion. Those articles appeared in $spyed's activity list on his userpage, but they never appeared on the front page of deviantART.

My theory? Yes, $spyed had a $ in front of his name from the very beginning, but it wasn't from deviantART - [link]

Have you ever wondered how it is that $spyed and °jark managed to join deviantART two weeks before it existed?

From their DMusic userpages:

jark
Type: DMember
Member Since: Jul 15, 2000

spyed
Type: Admin
Member Since: Jul 15, 2000

Another deviantPuzzle solved. That's the day they joined DMusic. °jark and $spyed's "Member Since" dates on deviantART are coming from DMusic's database. If that kind of member information is being shared, then why wouldn't their symbols?

Oh, and check out °jark's last post on his DMusic userpage - [link] - made some much needed adjustments to the HTML here at deviantART... Here at deviantART? In a post on DMusic? Crossposting much? And if the posts crossed over, then why wouldn't the symbols?

No, $spyed didn't co-found deviantART. $spyed founded DMusic. It wasn't until DMusic didn't perform the way $spyed wanted it to that his ever-present $ (from DMusic) suddenly came to mean that he'd been one of deviantART's founding fathers.

I suffer neither liars nor fools gladly... but boy am I glad that $spyed is turning out to be both.

All of the sites shared a common user and news database (including all related tables, such as journals). The administration console provided the means to define which sites the articles would appear on. So this theory is just...wrong. As for symbols not matching, that's because each site defined, through code specific to each site, which access privileges resulted in which symbols & title displays. Access privileges are defined on a per-item basis, and in no way have anything to do with the join date. The section I've quoted above this specific part of the response illustrates quite clearly why people who 1) don't know code and 2) don't know about private, specific implementations of code should not speak on their observations of said code. The result is that the line about "suffering neither liars nor fools" applies more appropriately to the original poster, not Angelo.

*UPDATE ONE*
Check it out, everyone - [link]

So now, suddenly, after five years... $spyed didn't join deviantART the same day °jark did. He joined 2 hours before.

Those dates have been a running joke on this site for years... at least as long as I've been here. And he seriously thought no one was going to notice if one of them suddenly changed?

I can assure you that both Scott and Angelo joined into this user database well before any of the dates listed on their user pages. The same goes for me and the many others who have similar join dates. That image illustrates the same lack of understanding of the backend system that ~brihana25 exhibits.