Amazon's plan to reduce its workforce by 18,000 jobs apparently has to include the staff of 13 at Digital Photography Review.com, known by one and all as DPReview.
Phil Askey started DPReview in 1998 and sold it to Amazon for a rumored $20 million* in 2007. Since then, it has continued acting as an independent review site, attempting to transition to YouTube with the hiring of the team of Chris Nichols and Jordan Drake from The Camera Store five years ago (they have since jumped to PetaPixel). DPReview announced today that it will suspend operations on April 10th and take down all of the site's content at some unspecified date in the future.
Strange fact
It brings to mind a strange fact that has been little noted. I've long marked the end of the era of the "digital transition" as the date of the demolition of Building 9 at Kodak Park in Rochester in 2007, the first of the spectacular demolitions that provide a visual analogue for Kodak's swift and brutal decline. But, assuming that that is a good inflection point, then it was only five years between the end of the transition period and the peak of the digital camera market, which occurred in 2012. Since then it has been a story of accelerating decline, as development slows, the ILC market becomes saturated, the former mass market makes do with smartphones, one company after another fails or fades, and the remaining ones follow the strategy of offering mavens "more for more." And as mavens buy less, less often.
It's really not DPReview's fault. The peak is past; the business is going downhill; the popularity of dedicated cameras is fading.
Wanton disregard
I'm especially sad to see all the information on the site destroyed. One of the best things Phil Askey did was to make a conscious effort to document the entire era in photographic history. By excising all of that from the record, it might be that as much information will be destroyed at a stroke as was lost when Julius Caesar burned the great Library at Alexandria in 48 B.C.** It's a shame and, frankly, a disgrace. The Internet is simply not a good repository for culture, information, and stored knowledge.
Mike
*A reader who shall remain unnamed tells me he has an inside source for this, but I can't confirm it, so to me it's a rumor. The terms of the deal were not disclosed to the public.
**Seneca the Younger quoted Livy as saying that 40,000 scrolls were destroyed. Depending on how much information could be stored on a scroll—I don't know—it's plausible that DPReview's many thousands of pages could rival the amount of information in 40,000 scrolls.
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Featured Comments from:
Steve Rosenblum: "It is ridiculous that they are going to delete all content on the site. It would cost Amazon the rounding error on their per minute profits to maintain that information on AWS [Amazon Web Services, an on-demand cloud business with $62B in revenue —Ed.]. I suspect they are planning to sell the information to some other entity, as it is valuable, but I don't know. I'm sorry to see this, I have followed them since they started and found their content to be very helpful."
Dillan: "Fun fact: Chris Nichols sold me my EF 50mm ƒ/1.4 when he worked for The Camera Store here in Calgary. Right out of the box, it just wouldn't focus on my 5D, so I brought it back the following Monday. He exchanged it for another one, no questions asked. I had the whole sad tale prepared, but I didn't need to tell it. It's a small thing, but I never forgot it. That was a lot of money for me at the time. It's still my favourite lens, and I am still a devoted Camera Store customer."
David Brown: "Re 'The Internet is simply not a good repository for culture, information, and stored knowledge.' Hear, hear! Paper can burn, true enough; but digital storage can so easily be unplugged even with the best of intentions."
Nicholas Hartmann: "Whaat?! Amazon, of all companies, can’t set aside a matchbox-worth of storage for DPReview’s archive? No more camera purchases from Amazon for this dinosaur…."
PaulW: "Your comparison of losing DPReview to the loss of the library of Alexandria is spot on. I'm still in a bit of shock over this. It's hard for me to fathom that such a valuable resource and so much valuable historical information will be lost to a business decision."
William Cook: "Sorry to see the site go. Way back when, I enjoyed reading the new camera reviews. Those reviews were not the usual regurgitation of camera maker’s press releases or spec sheets; they were honest hands-on reviews. In those days I was keen to keep up with the fast-moving market and technology, not so much any more. And that’s probably the personal micro reason for the macro problem. Still, sad to see them go."
Tom Burke: "This does feel like the end of an era. Like many others there have been times when I have availed myself of DPReview’s pages extensively—and then long times when I haven’t. The former were generally when I was considering a purchase. I would then use the (relevant) forums a lot in the period immediately after I’d made the purchase, and found them helpful.
"Scrolls: a comment in a book called The Book, by Keith Houston suggests that that book (smallish hardback, 426 pages including text, notes and index), might hold as much as seven times more information than a scroll occupying the same volume of shelf space. The Book is about the development of books, and the media on which they have been written or printed. Strongly recommended, for its informational value, and also because the hardback, at least, is a beautifully produced object. Not fancy, but elegant and purposeful. If you want to know about papyrus, scrolls, the development of writing, and way too much about vellum, this is the one for you."
Mike replies: I used to have a wonderful mini-library of books about books. Alas, lost and scattered due to moves, volumes left behind here and there, and other vagaries of time.
Tommy Williams: "It looks like the Archive Team at the Internet Archive is taking some extraordinary steps to save as much of the DPReview content as they can which goes well beyond their normal scraping and storing, so maybe—this time—we won't lose such an important piece of history."
Greg: "Here's a link to Dave Etchells praising his 'competition': Quote: 'It’s hard to state the sense of loss I feel, trying to come to grips with DPR’s closure. It leaves a gap in my world, as over-dramatic as that sounds. It’s true though. I think most people imagined us as competitors, and we were to an extent, but it was a very friendly competition. The photo business is an unusually congenial and friendly one to begin with, and I counted many on the DPR team as good personal friends.'"
Andrew Kochanowski: "I don't want to be a contrarian, But twenty years ago a site like that had some value to compare objective information between equipment that was rapidly changing. Whether it was a new Nikon or Canon or a new system, it was useful to be able to access the objective information about it and a bit of subjective feel-in-the hand, maybe make some decisions on what to buy.
"Now and for the past 10 or more years? Not so much. Ever since its Amazon acquisition and especially in the past few years the content was uninspiring. Yes, a compendium of what's new and when was it issued. That's about it. Ah, but the forums. Yes, moderated in the best 1990s tradition, dominated by would-be experts with fragile skins. I thought you got kicked out of there Mike? I sure did, many years ago. Not that I had much to add to the my gear is better than yours threads, so maybe it was for the best."
Mike replies: I did, in the Askey era. Phil apparently had a burr under his saddle about other people acting like they knew something. But, in fairness, the posting that got me booted was actually pretty obnoxious. It wasn't as bad as some other things that didn't get people kicked out, but I could see their side of it.
Peter Croft: "Oh, here we go again. The big fish snap up and swallow the best of the small fry, then close them down. Think Lotus (Microsoft), Word Perfect (MS again), Macromedia (Adobe), Micrografx (Corel) and a dozen, scores of others. We pay big money to own software, only to find it orphaned. Macromedia Authorware used to be a career path in its own right, but Adobe got their hands on it and shut it down! As soon as I learned Amazon had bought DPReview, I thought that this would happen, and it has. I especially liked the sample images shot around London before the 200 lbs. gorilla stepped in and took it away to the USA. And like you, I immediately thought of the huge database of camera and lens data accumulated. Surely that can't be lost? Surely that must be preserved and made available in some way. To trash that would be a crime. What a damn pity. At least it will free up all the time I spend each day reading the site."