Polyvore was a creative hub full of people who artistic souls, some troubled and in need of the healing artistic endeavours produce, who enjoyed fashion and home decor and art. We made collages which doubles as ads for the products they depicted in some cases. Many of us made photomontage collage art - digital visual mashups ...not for profit but just to soothe our nerves. Polyvore had a contest every day where they picked the Top Art Sets, another for Top Fashion sets and weekly beauty Sets.
Then a Canadian company decided that Polyvore was somehow drawing people away from their webstore - even though many of the 20 million users of Polyvore were not in the right demographic to afford a thousand dollar Balenciaga scarfs - no matter how good some were at putting said haute couture items into Vogue and Elle quality layouts. When the company bought it out they shuttered the collage making function to the horror and grief of many Polyvore users. Cruelly, they gave us zero warning. They shut it down before we received the mail that the axe was falling. I have posted some of my artsets on Twitter as well as on Tumblr. Sadly, these - and everyone else on Poly's sets are now pointing back to the company via a rediect such that what pointed to Polyvore now points to the company, acting as free advertsing for the company instead of dearly departed Polyvore. To have a company snatch what is precious away - with no warning - and no time to say good bye to the community - and then utilize things you created as a mashup in order to drive sales to their site without any recompense to those who made the sets, and NOT for the company that bought Polyvore out is underhanded, manipulative and ...evil. There I've said it. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity I hear someone cry - but I don't want to be that unkind - their CEO has received honours - he is not stupid by a long shot. So either executed things very badly, and on the fly or... they are evil and trying for viral traction through the pain and anger and shock, to drive people to their brand and site. they are even using their competitors copyrighted images to do so. This cannot end well for them should they stay on this course. There are lots of plans in the works and a number of ongoing actions to find a way to bring the site back in some capacity. But Lauren Coates' petition to get the collage functions back is top of my mind today. I have signed it - can you sign it as well?
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Aqualyra
singer-songwriter/bassist/ Archives
April 2018
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