deviantART Facebook Integration Proposal by Michael Droz

In June '11, I interviewed for a product management position with deviantART that they would later offer me but that I would turn down for a promotion with my employer at the time, Visa. As part of the interview process with deviantART they asked me to make a proposal for how they could best integrate their offering with Facebook. Below is my proposal...two years later I still think it's a pretty darn good idea.

deviantART – Facebook Integration Proposal

Submitted by: Michael Droz

Assumptions:

Basic features such as the following are a given for any serious deviantART Facebook integration and will not be unnecessarily covered in this mini proposals – space is limited you know!  

• Artist’s gallery integration
• Auto creation of FB Fan pages for artists
• Integration of deviantART user accounts and their Facebook accounts allowing them to become fans of a deviantART artist’s fan page automatically when they become a “watcher” on deviantART and the ability to “like” the artist or any of the artist’s work by clicking on the famous “like” button.

Proposed features:

deviantART Gallery Walk

deviantART Artist’s FB Promotion Toolbox – <ran out of space, we’ll discuss at another time>

deviantART Gallery Walk

Idea:  The idea behind the deviantART Gallery Walk is to simulate the experience of monthly art walks on Facebook using art from deviantART.

Target audience: All Facebook users worldwide.

Benefits:

• deviantART
• Brand exposure
• Increased registrations via the viral nature of the FB graph and the deviantART Gallery Walk invite feature.   
• Increased revenue through art sales
• Increased revenue through ad sales
• deviantART Gallery Walk Users
• Connects them with their FB friends in a meaningful way.
• Exposure to new artists and art genres

Application Marketing:

• Promote the application to existing deviantART users.
• Purchase ads on FB to promote the application to users that fall into the art_lovers segmentation - these will be our Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen all in one! (Reference to Gladwell’s Tipping Point.)

Use Cases/Functionality:

• Create Gallery Walk  
• Personalize Gallery Walk
• Title
• Keywords / categories of art to include in your art walk
• Anime, Oscar Wilde, Photography, Libya, and Mark Twain
• Invitees are also allowed to expand the recommended keywords and categories of the gallery walk
• Date/Time/Duration of your gallery walk
• Invite friends
• Select which of your FB friends to invite
• Set reminder frequency
• 1 week prior
• 1 day prior
• 1 hr prior
• Attend Gallery Walk
• Start Gallery Walk
• When you start an art walk you and your friends are connected to a shared “Sit Back” type presentation of art work based on the categories and keywords pre-selected.
• View art <timed transition through the array of art selected by the our gallery_algorithm>
• Artists are notified via email when their art is included in and viewed in an art walk.
• Comment on art
• As friends are looking at the art together via our Gallery Walk application they can chat with each other and comment on the art in real time.
• These comments can be posted back to the artist’s gallery on deviantART if the users want.
• Rate art
• Users can rate art as they go through the gallery walk
• Scale TBD
• Save art walk
• Users can save their art walk as a personal gallery within the deviantART Gallery Walk application.  <6/10/11 – Art Walk>