Season One of the DeviantArt Podcast!

I thought that the features of the deviantART watch 2.0 beta that was released a while back (to a selected number of people, including me) was very much in key aspects better than Eclipse in terms of the social media features in the watch 2.0 beta website. I still remember when a staff member at deviantART gave me a phone call asking for feedback. I still have the email response that I gave after the phone call, and I want to highlight some of the points that I made in the email. A copy of the email can be found here: https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqvgph

The two main features that I want to highlight are the watch feature and the notification feature. In the watch 2.0 website there was a watch page that had artwork that was curated from other artists as collections of artwork on the deviantART website. I think that this watch feature is an essential feature of deviantART as it allows users to explore more of the site through algorithmic ranked collections curated by other users on the site. In the watch 2.0 site, you had it in the front and centre as the main page of the website allowing users to explore artwork deviations that were suited to their tastes, in the same way that tweets are shown in a Twitter feed and Instagram posts are shown on Instagram. This is the one feature that is missing from your website that is needed for the community to grow. I missed that feature and wanted a way to get it back somehow as a feature on your new Eclipse website. You could, for example, include it in one page where people that you watch post up collections that are shown in the feed, with other similar work from other people recommended by the algorithm, and alongside new work posted up by deviantART users that a person follows. By this, I mean that the feed is simplified to one feed showing new undiscovered content recommended by the algorithm, as well as new content from people the user follows.

The notification feature was another key aspect that was really done well in the watch 2.0 beta. It simplified the notifications so that it's all shown in one feed, like how I've described the watch feature as being. The deviantART notification feature is to the Twitter notification feed, as the main deviantART watch feed is to the main home Twitter feed. It contains all the notifications in one feed on the website such as llamas given to the user and new followers/watchers from the user's account. I said that it was the single best feature of deviantART, and that was because it showed all of the update that would happen with regards to all the aspects of the users account. It would be similar to how Twitter shows new followers, new likes on your Twitter account, and recommendations of tweets that the people that you follow have liked on Twitter. I can't remember exactly how it worked, but I do remember enjoying using it, and this was probably the main reason why I came back to seeing the website again for another time.

You don't need to make a website too complex, you just need to make it functional. And being complex and functional is much better than simplicity without functionality. I feel like with this new website, you have not really evolved as a website but rather presented the website differently, like a lite version of what deviantART was. You kept the website simple, but didn't evolve the functionality of the website in a way that lets users discover more content, like the watch feature that I described above, or keep users coming back for more, like the notification feature as described above. The watch 2.0 website was a bit complex in its workings in its watch 2.0 algorithm and code. However, the design of the website was presented in a very simple and elegant way, that is, it combined the features of the website in such a way that made it easier to use and above all, functional. What I mean by functional, is how the watch 2.0 website combined it's social media aspects in it's website, which is what you are lacking in the Eclipse website at the moment. The only new feature that I see is the "Recommended for You", which is limited in how it worked because it only recommends deviantART artists that I can follow. That is a bit of how you have evolved one feature of the website, the deviantART user community and have a new feature recommending other users that have similar art on the website. That is a feature that I like seeing, and I want more of that evolution for your deviantART website, like the features that I suggested above.

I'm recalling this all from memory and ideas that I have, so the watch 2.0 features may not be accurate. But if you still have the watch 2.0 website, I would love to have screenshots of that website, simply because it's the best evolution of a website, that is deviantART, that I've seen in any website update anywhere on the internet! And that's saying a lot from my long history of internet use from the early 2000s.

Edit: I've had a look at your website again and liked what I see in the notification feature of the website. The person that I was corresponding with by email (in the link above) is Katasi Kulubya (katasihk@deviantart.com). I would love to correspond to him/her by email if he/she is still on your deviantART staff team!