Camera Review Site DPReview Finds a Buyer, Avoids Shutdown by Amazon (arstechnica.com) 17
ArsTechnica says: Back in March, the editor-in-chief of the 25-year-old, Amazon-owned camera review site DPReview.com announced that the site was shutting down. The site was the casualty of a round of layoffs at Amazon that will affect a total of about 27,000 employees this year; DPReview was meant to stop publishing new pieces on April 10 and to be available in read-only mode for an undetermined period of time after that. But then, something odd happened: The site simply kept publishing at a fairly regular clip throughout the entire month of April and continuing until now.
A no-update update from EIC Scott Everett published in mid-May merely acknowledged that pieces were still going up and that there was "nothing to share," which wasn't much to go on but also didn't make it sound as though the site were in imminent danger of disappearing. Yesterday, Everett finally had something to share: DPReview.com and its "current core editorial, tech, and business team[s]" were being acquired by Gear Patrol, an independently owned consumer technology site founded by Eric Yang in 2007. The deal had already closed as of yesterday, June 20.
A no-update update from EIC Scott Everett published in mid-May merely acknowledged that pieces were still going up and that there was "nothing to share," which wasn't much to go on but also didn't make it sound as though the site were in imminent danger of disappearing. Yesterday, Everett finally had something to share: DPReview.com and its "current core editorial, tech, and business team[s]" were being acquired by Gear Patrol, an independently owned consumer technology site founded by Eric Yang in 2007. The deal had already closed as of yesterday, June 20.
Yay! (Score:5, Informative)
It was a good site, better than reviews by bloggers and "influencers" who know nothing about photography.
Re:Yay! (Score:5, Insightful)
DPReview is an amazing site, incredibly valuable reviews of cameras for an extremely long time, an amazing resource. I'm glad it's staying up and getting a new home!
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Re: Yay! (Score:2)
I agree. Itâ(TM)s one of the old sites, just as Slashdot. I think Slashdot got abandoned too soon. The moderation industry is huge and they pioneered creative ways to moderate, a precursor to things like âoecommunity notesâ or other systems.
Re: (Score:3)
The challenge is to find folks who aren't that -- purely independent commentators who know what they're talking about and are willing to share. One of the best in photography is Thom Hogan (bythom.com) -- he mostly writes about Nikon, which is the sort of camera I use.
There are others out there who write about other models. But they're hard to find just because they're not aggressively marketed and corporate. DPReview is unique in that it's both corporate *and* reasonably unbiased and honest.
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Yep. They seemed to know their shit.
These sites are gold. I'm a home-studio recording musician and being a musician means I'm always looking for new gear and theres so many absolute trash sites with people who just push myths (guitar stuff is horrible for this) or uncritical "We sell tlhis thing, its great!" marketing content. But the few sites that actually have working musicians and studio owners running them, are gold because I can look at what those guys think and actually be able to make something appr
GREAT NEWS (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You should check out https://www.kenrockwell.com/ [kenrockwell.com]
Hooray! (Score:5, Informative)
Amazon appears to be almost always bad (see other posts).
Glad to hear it (Score:3)
I haven't been to DPReview in years... but it's always been a great resource when I was shopping for a camera or lenses.
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That's true, I have to admit I use my phone a lot more than my dSLR camera anymore. There are some things my phone doesn't seem to do quite as well, but that appears to be the automatic post-processing and I haven't (yet) started playing with the phone's unprocessed (RAW) file versions.
Hoped this would happen! (Score:2)
They even send a mail to the users! (Score:5, Informative)
Together, we’ll continue on our site’s journey to provide the community with the great content you’ve come to expect from us.
It’s a natural home for the next phase in the site, and we’re thrilled to see what we can accomplish at a company entirely dedicated to product journalism.
Learn more from DPReview [dpreview.com]
Learn more from Gear Patrol [gearpatrol.com]
We’ve also worked hard to minimize the transition’s impact on existing DPReview community members and newsletter subscribers.
Here’s what will and won’t change:
DPReview Forum accounts will remain up and running. If you’ve logged out of your account recently, you may need to reset your password the next time you log in. If you would like to delete your DPReview account and associated personal information, please visit this link.
DPReview Newsletter subscriptions will continue to function as usual. There’s no need to sign up again to receive emails. If you’d like to opt out of receiving the DPReview newsletter, please visit this link.
However, DPReview’s terms of service have been updated. DPReview’s newsletters, forums, and community tools will now be managed by Gear Patrol, as will your personal information, in order to continue to provide you with access to your DPReview account, the newsletter, and related services.
As such, please review our updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, which will govern your use of DPReview’s services going forward, to understand how Gear Patrol will run these services and how your personal information will be collected, used, and protected.
Contact Us If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to send us a note through our feedback form.
The DPReview Team