Really ?

[Knorp]

that’s a bit weird … april fool ?

DPReview.com to close

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.

www.dpreview.com

 

[Paul Spinnler]

Recession. Seems like it will still get worse before it gets better.

DPReview seemingly didn't make the cut in terms of profitability in the view of Amazon's management. It was either losing money or not profitable enough.

Let's see how the financial sector develops in the coming months.

 

[scho]

I requested a data dump of my files before they shut down.

 

[Knorp]

I requested a data dump of my files before they shut down.

I did likewise, but what a sad situation. I joined Nov 25, 2006.

 

[RossNH]

A shame. I'm really going to miss the Studio Scene Comparison Tool

 

[Tim]

Since this is happening , I will approach the mods here about a Ricoh GR specific forum

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

This is what the world has come to: money. If it isn't profitable enough, it isn't worth saving. Dpreview represents a unique documentation of the development of digital photography from the early days until now, but corporations like Amazon don't give a shit. They won't even keep it as a read only website except for a limited time.

This is also one of the problems with digital data compared to printed data. Your old books and magazines will remain until you physically destroy them. Websites just disappears. The data may be found through Wayback Machine and similar services, but nobody knows how long that will last, and most people don't even know about those options.

 

[Tim]

I would have thought, if they offered it for sale, someone may step up.

Additionally, I wonder if they looked to, prune how much they were doing, reduce costs there and hence prune staff, then come at it from the other direction by asking for a subscription to post in the forums and/or donations to help keep it open.

I would think someone would like a copy of the whole system even as your say read only.
The Wayback only keeps chunks of the sites when I've used it on the old ricohforum, what look quite random bits to me.

 

[k-hawinkler]

Whoever made that decision is probably not a photographer.

 

[biglouis]

I've always been a great fan of Amazon. I really have for many years felt they are a company which embraced the new paradigm of e-commerce and really did put the customer first. I've been using them since 1995 (I used to buy books and CDs from them and ship them over to the UK from the US until they established a European presence).

Amazon bought Dpreview along with many, many other small 'community' companies (e.g. IMDB, another UK company) back in the mid-90s because they understood the subscriber model. Back in the nineties, as the e-commerce pundit Thomas Power stated: "content+community=e-commerce".

By purchasing content companies, with a strong community Amazon added potential customers. It is always a lot easier in business to 'inside-sell', e.g. sell more stuff to people who are already your customers or clients.

This was and actually I think still is, a very clever strategy (and I base this on my experience starting one of the first e-commerce companies in the UK which is still successfully trading albeit without any involvement from myself for over 20 years).

However, as an old man one thing I have seen again and again in my lifetime is great companies getting too big, then getting out of touch with their values and then their customers. In the end, loyal customers are rewarded by being treated in a more and more indifferent, or even hostile manner.

It saddens me to think that Amazon has turned this corner.

Bezos chose the name Amazon because back in 1994 he recognised that the internet would become the biggest, widest, deepest channel to market for goods and services. That is why Amazon is such a broad business in terms of products and services. Again, a very clever vision. I always expected Bezos to be worth considerably more than Bill Gates, who at the time Amazon was founded was, iirc, the richest man in the world. I think Bezos achieved a bigger fortune than Gates until Musk came along.

Anyhoo, it is clear to me, and it saddens me no end, that Amazon has turned the corner into treating consumers like a resource and to be enlisted and abandoned with nothing but indifference.

To cast off Dpreview is in the medium and long term a truly dumb idea. Photographers are a niche community but boy do they spend money. E-commerce is about the 'long-tail' model, creating many, many, many, valuable niche markets and selling products and services to them. I thought Amazon understood that but clearly - and it is probably a generational thing - the original thinkers and planners have moved on and the 'shareholder value' guys have stepped in, closing down businesses where there is no direct income to the bottom line.

Shame really, but at least Chris and Jordan are moving on to Peta-Pixel and considering I have been watching them since their first YouTube review (a m43rds camera, iirc) at least they won't disappear from our screens.

RIP Amazon.... er... I mean.... Dpreview (Freudian slip there).

 

[Knorp]

I like that: “RIP Amazon”. So from now on I’ll take my ‘niche business’ elsewhere.

 

[Paul Spinnler]

I think someone should archive the forum and ingest all the data into a big language model so we can ask it all questions and get answers for everything photo related.

You should be able to create a model that answers: What is the best wide-angle for Ricoh and how does it compare to Canon's wide-angles and get an answer.

 

[Knorp]

That’s ChatGPT for you …

 

[pieve]

ChatGPT is already pretty good for answering photography questions:

 

[Paul Spinnler]

Yes, but what I meant is you can customize these models by ingesting certain bits of data. So if you extracted all of the DPReview text and trained an AI model on it, you could ask it more niche questions and get a good answer. The model becomes a super charged search engine so to say.

For example, you could ask "How good is the RF 80 1.2 vs. the Nikon 80 1.4 vs. Otus" and it would concoct an answer based on three long forgotten posts where this was discussed.

I think it will come at one point that people ingest the know how of forums to create niche AI bots with endless know how in a specific domain.

 

[pieve]

Pretty spot-on answer:

 

[scho]

I did likewise, but what a sad situation. I joined Nov 25, 2006.

Yes, very sad situation. I joined May 18, 2000. I still remember discussing the forum with Phil Askey when it was just getting started as a one man operation.

 

[Jorgen Udvang]

ChatGPT is already pretty good for answering photography questions:

View attachment 201954

Computers have made it easier to find answers to questions for decades, so that's nothing new. ChatGPT is to me totally useless, since there are no references. If I don't know where the knowledge originates from and what the purpose of it is, I can't relate.

The problem with Dpr disappearing isn't that the data won't be available. The problem, at least for me, is that I won't any longer be able to vaste my time finding old reviews, reading grumpy irrelevant comments and brilliantly formulated answers to stuff I will never need. It's like in the old days when I could spend an entire evening browsing more or less related articles in an encyclopedia, one leading to the next and to the next... etc.

And then again, reading the comments, knowing who commented, who liked a particular lens, comparing his like or dislike with his or her posting history, so that I can know if that is a person that I would take advice from. ChatGPT removes all that. It's the monster of the dystopian science fiction novels I used to read as a teenager, the first in a row of increasingly scary monsters.

 

[biglouis]

I like that: “RIP Amazon”. So from now on I’ll take my ‘niche business’ elsewhere.

Ironically, Amazon and similar online businesses have forced the closure of 'bricks' companies who either could not adapt to online business, e.g. 'clicks and bricks', did not have the ethos (perhaps now, no longer necessary) to attract consumers in cyberspace, or had balance sheets so heavy with property that it was hard to liquidate, that in combination or individually these factors lead to their demise. In the UK we lost Woolworths, Maplins, Tower Records (one of my favourite outings in London) and even some like Marks and Spencers (who were slow and loathe to embrace online business) continue to struggle from year to year. So, a lot of my purchasing is regularly with Amazon because there is no real high street left here in the UK. To give you an idea in the last month I have bought underpants, packing tape and watch batteries (a specific kind) from Amazon. Even though I live in London the kind of small and even large businesses where I could have got these items are not as easy to find as you might think.

LouisB

 

[Knorp]

Obviously one stop shopping is very convenient, but surely there must be plenty shops in the UK who sell their goods online ?
I can buy probable everything online; underwear, shoes, coats, socks, hats, batteries, tape, plants, bulbs and even camera equipment ...
No need for Amazon, although admittedly they have at times interesting prices, but anyway it's good bye to them from me.