[Oliver Ritter-Wolff]

Pro Business

on: March 21, 2023 at 3:58 pm

Got the following Email today:

“After nearly 25 years of operation, DPReview will be closing in the near future. This difficult decision is part of the annual operating plan review that our parent company shared earlier this year.

The site will remain active until April 10, and the editorial team is still working on reviews and looking forward to delivering some of our best-ever content.

Everyone on our staff was a reader and fan of DPReview before working here, and we’re grateful for the communities that formed around the site.

Thank you for your support over the years, and we hope you’ll join us in the coming weeks as we celebrate this journey.

Sincerely,

Scott Everett
General Manager”

https://www.riwodot.de

https://vero.co/riwodot

https://www.instagram.com/riwodot/

• This topic was modified 1 year ago by Oliver Ritter-Wolff.

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1288]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #1 on: March 21, 2023 at 4:13 pm

That is pretty dramatic news, for sure.  I’ll post an article later.

All DP review readers are welcome here.  Time to step things up a bit.

 

Kevin Raber
Owner and Publisher of photoPXL

[Oliver Ritter-Wolff Silver Member Posts: 196]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #2 on: March 21, 2023 at 5:09 pm

Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake Join PetaPixel to Lead its YouTube Channel.

Oliver

https://www.riwodot.de

https://vero.co/riwodot

https://www.instagram.com/riwodot/

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 930]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #3 on: March 21, 2023 at 5:18 pm

I think this website would make a good follow-on resource for the DP Review readership, if many of them are not here already.

Looked at in context, there has been a large blood-letting in the digital economy sectors over the past while with every indication that the shake-out is not over yet, and for quite some time now the viability of a number of photography websites has been shaky – apparently this niche is not a gold-mine, it’s more a labour of love and big corporations aren’t in business for love.

DP Review was founded in 1998 and Amazon has owned it since 2007. I don’t know why Phil Askey sold it to them in the first place, but it meant that DP Review is a very small business unit in a behemoth corporation, very much at the mercy of the grand corporate strategy and unless it is wildly profitable, extremely vulnerable to be steamrolled when shake-outs are on the table. This is yet another lesson of how much there is to be said for the survival of independent small and medium businesses who cherish being useful to their community without aspiring to commercial domination of the world. But it’s not always so easy to grow and sustain them. I think it’s sad.

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[L Berle Participant Posts: 26]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #4 on: March 21, 2023 at 9:05 pm

It was sad to hear that DPR is shutting down, especially at such short notice!!!

I checked and I have been a member there since August 2003 and though I had forgotten the name Phil Askey (mentioned by Mark above), I thought that it changed and not necessarily all in good ways following its sale to the new owners.

[David Millier]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #5 on: March 22, 2023 at 7:22 am

Kevin Raber wrote:

That is pretty dramatic news, for sure.  I’ll post an article later.

All DP review readers are welcome here.  Time to step things up a bit.

 

I’ve been a member of DPReview since 2001 with nearly 24k posts on the forums. Love it or hate it, DPR has been the centre of photo forums in sheer scale throughout its existence. There is a lot of content tied up on their forum servers as well as the editorial content. I’m guessing the Wayback Machine will preserve some content, but not the forums.  Individual members can request a download of their own content (but I guess that will be just their own content, not the complete threads without which it won’t make a lot of sense).  Closing the site without preserving it, is as Mike Johnston says, a wanton act of destruction of digital history.

Forum members are flapping around frantically trying to agree on new homes for their communities. Perhaps Kevin and co can post on the DPReview forums and offer a haven? I would have thought some of the smaller, more specialist forums in particular, with their smaller communities would be grateful.

• This reply was modified 1 year ago by David Millier.

[Reid Shay Silver Member Posts: 1]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #6 on: March 22, 2023 at 10:09 am

There are lots of good photography review sites on the Web. There are places to find great expert perspectives on photography in general, including PhotoPXL. The part of DPReview that was unique was their Forum. Where can I find a discussion of:

• the new version of XYZ software.
• Or my camera is stuck in such and such a mode.Help
• I just tested three different noise reduction SWs and here are the results.
• What do you all think of using the new 90mm macro lens for insect photography?
• I’m going to be traveling to Milan this July and was wondering if there is a good place to take a panorama of the city?

These are not formal article submission to a photo Website for review by an editor before publishing. These are on-the-fly comments and questions. I have posted these kinds of thing on DPReview many times (my profile says I have started 167 threads and made 1,589 comments). But I have read many, many more threads over the years. DPReview has actually been a part of my daily routine.

Someone has to pickup the photography forum mantle. A site that is lightly moderated to try and keep comments on topic and not allow too many personal attacks. My guess is the review staff at DPReview was the bulk of the cost of the site and the cost of the Forums was less. But there is a cost to manage and store a Forum. It will be difficult to find someone to do this. If Amazon Web Services with their world-leading online storage doesn’t want to do it, who will?

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 930]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #7 on: March 22, 2023 at 10:53 am

Hi Reid; you say “someone has to pickup the forum mantle”. We have a very good, well-designed forum right here. A forum of course is what users make of it. Like all networked activities, the more users you have on the network, as long as some standards are maintained, the more useful content one should expect to find, the more it will be used and the greater its viability. So let’s go to it! And if the scale of this forum needs to grow to accommodate a whole lot more users, and if that costs more money there are three ways of raising it: more ads if that’s feasible in an acceptable manner, or user contributions, or modest user fees. We don’t need Amazon, and unfortunate as it is to see DP fold, it is replaceable right here and now.

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1288]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #8 on: March 22, 2023 at 11:06 am

Mark is right Reid.  Drop some hints and let people on DPR know we are in business.. Our forum capability is robust but only as good as the readers and contributors on the forum.  We have moderators in place and we have some very good topics and I’m willing to add more as we go.  I will say though that we will have very little toloerance for personal attacks or trolling.  I put this site together to form a community of like-minded and passionate photo enthusiasts.  The strength of this community will only be as strong as those that take part in it.

Please let your friends on the DPR forum know that photoPXL is here and ready to go.

I am looking also for more contributors of articles and reviews.  If you are interested in writing please get in touch with me:  [email protected]

 

Kevin Raber
Owner and Publisher of photoPXL

[Kevin Raber Silver Member Posts: 1288]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #9 on: March 22, 2023 at 3:54 pm

The following is by Reid Shay.  He seemed to be having an issue posting this, so I am posting it on his behalf.

==================

Mark & Kevin, I’m glad you want to help fill the void. It won’t be easy. DPReview’s site on the Web exists for a reason. The main reason is momentum. Once a leader gets the majority of postings they tend to stay dominant. If they lose it, it is usually because of something major. MySpace lost its dominant position to Facebook because it was sold to a company that most users didn’t like. DPReview is losing its dominant position only by choice. Once a site is dominant it garners the most advertising and the users come back because there is the most information there. Another reason they exist is their Forums are very lightly moderated. If there is an “issue” it is addressed after the fact and rarely. When you post it is out there. A third reason is how easy the site is to use. It is free and you don’t even have to sign in unless you want to post something. And login is trivial. They have a lot of forums and they are very well organized. Most other forums are organized in many nested sub-forums, a more difficult system to find things. I don’t think I ever had a problem deciding where to start a thread or which forums to glance at each morning.

Addressing your comments about funding, I have some observations. Advertising is great. Users can glance at an ad and decide if it is of interest and click on it. It is not intrusive and shouldn’t negatively impact momentum. The main issue with advertising is you need a lot of momentum (eyeballs) to get it in the first place. The biggest way to kill momentum is to charge users. Rarely do paywalls succeed. Reid’s Reviews (no relation) are very good and I doubt he feels the need for a lot of momentum. Other readers don’t really care how many other people are reading his reviews. The NY Times and Wall Street Journal already had very large and dedicated readers. Putting the content behind a paywall was a good choice for them. Without a very large readership or dominant momentum, only the last funding idea of user contributions makes sense. Perhaps there are some users or companies that will miss DPReview enough to consider donating some money to replace it. One question is are they willing to do so long-term to keep the replacement going. That is more difficult. As was mentioned in a previous post, closing the DPReview site without preserving it is a wanton act of destruction of digital history. The best funding solution is to find a sugar-daddy or mommy to help fund a replacement site. The individual or organization may also have the respect to also approach Amazon and acquire the existing history. This would also help Amazon stop the negative reputation bleeding going on. They might even give the new site a deal on AWS storage. And the problem of momentum for the new site is solved. There must be a serious photographer out there with more money than they know what to do with. 😊

Kevin, your request to tell people about PhotoPXL is reasonable. I have done so many times in the DPReview forums in the past. But in this environment, that is not possible. Yesterday I tried to start a thread about where people were thinking of migrating and the thread was deleted by the moderators. All posts pertaining too the demise of the site must be in one of two existing threads. Those two threads are already so large that few are now posting or reading them. I private-messaged one of the moderators asking if there was a way to ask my question without it getting lost in the noise and I got back a one-word answer, “no”. Sad

Kevin Raber
Owner and Publisher of photoPXL

[Mark D Segal Silver Member Posts: 930]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #10 on: March 22, 2023 at 4:32 pm

Reid, yes, what you say about incumbency is largely correct; it takes a long time to build it up and it can take very little time to destroy it, whether intentionally or by dint of other circumstances. I also agree that it makes sense to build readership before charging money for it, even if very little. Too many people have a misplaced notion that access to websites should necessarily be free, no matter that there is no free lunch out there and the better they are the more resources and time it takes to keep them that way. Such is life.

It’s good that you tried promoting PhotoPXL over at DP Review, but the response you got does not surprise me. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me if those folks were thinking of re-creating a DP Review II, for which prospect they would obviously prefer to keep as much of their readership with them as they can. If that’s the motivation, perhaps they could be negotiating with Amazon to take back the whole content intact, who knows. Perhaps there will be another shoe to drop on all this – time will tell. Meanwhile maybe this forum will gain adherents as people look for other good places in which to converse and get the info they need.

Mark D Segal Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8, SilverFast HDR, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop". Please check the PhotoPXL Store for availability.

[Jim Kasson Silver Member Posts: 77]

Re: dpreview at the end

Reply #11 on: March 23, 2023 at 1:52 pm

Reid Shay, you can post about the DPR demise and what to do about it in the DPR MF Forum. Some of the mods want to consolidate the threads on the topic in the fora that they moderate. We’re not doing that in the MF Forum.

So, post away!

Jim

[Author]

Posts