News DPReview was sold to Gear Patrol

[Serge]

The good news is that DPREVIEW stayed afloat and the staff kept their jobs. The bad news is that they sold out to Gear Patrol. Gear Patrol has nothing to do (and had nothing to do) with the photo industry. In any case, DPREVIEW will not be what it was in the past. And there is a danger that it will continue to deteriorate in this direction. It will turn from a global photo resource into a local one.

 

[dirk]

The good news is that DPREVIEW stayed afloat and the staff kept their jobs.

+1

The bad news is that they sold out to Gear Patrol. Gear Patrol has nothing to do (and had nothing to do) with the photo industry.

Can be a good thing or a bad thing. Time will tell

In any case, DPREVIEW will not be what it was in the past.

That is for sure

And there is a danger that it will continue to deteriorate in this direction.

That depends on what Gear Patrol will do with it and how fast it will do it. The deal with imaging-resource was a desaster. Therefore everything is possible in theory.

I hope that Gear Patrol is better in communication than dpreview was. I would expect within the next 3 days a very transparent presentation of a road map for the community. What do they want to do with the forums, how and in which time frame.

If they are not able to do this after these long negotiations, it would be a strong indication that they do not have plan for it and it will end in a slow exodus of the forums within the next 12 months. Now that so many dpreview users have seen how nice it is to have a modern software for a forum, it will be very hard to go back to the stone age again.

 

[dirk]

Here is what a user wrote at dpreview in the Fuji section:

So I am happy DPR is not going away, but this is just the beginning of the story not the end. DPR will have to produce revenue I expect the DPR revenue per employee is below Gear Patrol which is on the low side for a small business (which is about 100K per employee).

https://www.zippia.com/gear-patrol-careers-1558791/revenue/#

https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/234365-41

We will see how it works out. But at the end of the day I expect being owned by Amazon was what allowed DPR to become what it was. With add blocking functionality even in WiFi routers like Amazon's own eero today and ad blocking S/W integrated in other internet filtering S/W the selling ads paradigm has changed. My eero mesh web blocks about 15,000 ads a week. I remember Richard Butler complaining about people using ad blockers on DPR a few years ago.

I hope they figure out how to make money. I really do. This is another chapter and another adventure. However, not all adventures end well especially those where VC funding is underwriting them. I did really well when we could boot strap without the use of VC funding. On the other hand at PoLTE many employees were paid partially with stock options which were worthless when VC's got involved.

 

[Smaug]

Hi All. For what it's worth, I've resigned my moderatorship at DPR and will be spending my photography forum time here, mostly. This place is much better run, with better software and easier to do my job. (Dirk gives his full support and doesn't tolerate bad behavior)

Also, our mission is clearer and less muddled by ownership by some big corporate entity. We may only have user reviews, but at least we know they are 100% honest and not skipping over things in order to save face on the part of the manufacturer.

I hope you all will stay here too, as we already have a nice community. It's amazing how it worked out that most of the troublemakers went elsewhere and we have the classy ones.

 

[wklee]

Hi All. For what it's worth, I've resigned my moderatorship at DPR and will be spending my photography forum time here, mostly. This place is much better run, with better software and easier to do my job. (Dirk gives his full support and doesn't tolerate bad behavior)

Also, our mission is clearer and less muddled by ownership by some big corporation entity. We may only have user reviews, but at least we know they are 100% honest and not skipping over things in order to save face on the part of the manufacturer.

I hope you all will stay here too, as we already have a nice community. It's amazing how it worked out that most of the troublemakers went elsewhere and we have the classy ones.

For sure, DPRF has a nice community, I am just an Average Photographer though using my iPhone for shooting. I’ve got no real talent.

 

[dirk]

I’ve got no real talent

talent does not matter, as long as you have fun with it! This is the purpose of a hobby. Having fun!

 

[hypo]

Well, I go back to my original prediction . . . this was all a cunning plan to get rid of Chris and Jordan. And it worked in the sense that they did a runner and now Amazon can tell the world the phoenix is rising from the ashes!
Don't want to prejudge events but: never heard of Gear Patrol before but a quick look at their site and it looks like a site that is marketing-focused (perhaps the clue's in their name).
One good outcome for me was that the announced closure prompted me to search for alternative sites and I found serveral good ones (including, obviously, this one).
So if reality lives up to the press release hype it will be a win-win scenario and if not well rip dpr.

 

[stevegep]

Here is what a user wrote at dpreview in the Fuji section:

Yes, I saw that, too on Zippia. Not much revenue there, which is cause for concern. As others have said, time will tell. Although I don't visit this site often (yet), I still like the look and feel, and this seems to be where I comment the most. I intend to stay at both (DPR and here) for now.

 

[wklee]

Gannon Burgett's response in Twitter.



Is there a Filter here in DPRF for swearwords like in DPR?

"Fuck Amazon for the way they handled this entire situation. You figure this sort of stuff out before shutting down an entire division of your company, not in hindsight after weeks of backlash and leaving freelancers to scramble for new gigs as they’re told they won’t have a job…"

I guess not!

 

[Tom Caldwell]

That is a good question. It is too early to say what they will do with the dpreview site and the forum. Of course they will say that they keep the best etc. But the financial situation will not improve, if they run it like in the past. You can not change something without changing something

Gear patrol seems to be more a marketing site to push products with so called reviews as far as I can tell from their website. We have to be very patient until we have a clear view about what they really want to do. I mean they can promise now everything to keep the people coming back again and again. The proof is in the pudding in 6 or 12 months.

I do not see their core competence in forum management, to say it in a diplomatic way

I would hardly say that dpreview were particularly good at forum management. They have very good forum software but are very dependent upon a core of free dedicated Moderators to almost completely manage their forum business. I would suggest that they would need several more members of staff should they not depend on voluntary Moderators so much. They have had an extraordinary good run from their Moderators and for Gear Patrol to emulate this they would need to keep this band of Moderators happy.