karin

I'm actually surprised that they didn't go their own way too, though they might feel more financially secure to be on the payroll somewhere. The big difference between them and the rest of the YouTubers out there is that they're older and have families, so being on payroll somewhere might be more appealing. Probably provides more stability than having to rely on YouTube ad revenue that can really fluctuate. 

https://petapixel.com/2023/03/21/chris-niccolls-and-jordan-drake-join-petapixel-to-lead-its-youtube-channel/
Why can't they be more honest and upfront.
DPReview TV is not closing then is it? It's getting a new logo.
If I were them I would have gone indie. I don't know why they feel they have to be freelancers for a .com blog
Let's face it, YouTube is bigger than Petapixel isn't it?

In a blink of an eye we're going to enter the "Web 4.0" era within a few years, when there is more AI written content on the internet than there is human written content. And you won't be able to tell the difference. 

One less pointless trip to the stratosphere (barely space!) would run DPR for 4 or 5 lives!
The forum there had a very strong NX presence, I hope we can attract here most of that traffic, even thought there are too many hobbyists and newbies, which I am not sure if they are the right target group for eoshd, still, it is a possibility..

I see what you did there 😉

It just has to be kept to a realistic level of operations. Why does DPReview for example need to be based in Seattle with such expensive real estate and offices, not to mention massively inflated salaries!
It would be better of with an HQ in Manchester or Berlin, and a modest office with 5 or 6 very talented employees.
Also a big cost for DPR is all the custom software engineering that powers the site and forum. That doesn't make much sense, you can use off the shelf solutions that are far better than their custom forum software anyway.
At the end of the day I don't think Amazon gave it much thought. They are cutting very deeply into non-core stuff and lumping things in together. They don't consider it important enough to even sell it. This is all about making 18,000 people redundant and saving money in a recession, after they hired too eagerly during covid.
Those mega bucks profit at the height of human suffering during lockdowns did not go into a bank to be saved for a rainy day at any of these corporations. It's all been spent and a lot of it has gone into the pockets of shareholders!
So they have nothing to get them through a rainy day.
Also rockets are fucking expensive.

From a purely business perspective, exactly. Their sole function and existence is to make enough profit in order that the owner can one day go to Mars.
Some would say, that couldn’t happen soon enough…
On the other hand, this kind of business practice is not new. It has existed for thousands of years. 
There are of course many more ethical businesses but they tend to be the ‘corner shop’ kind that care about their customers and their customers care about them.
No one loves Amazon, only the ability to obtain stuff at a click of a button next day or even in some places, same day. 
Something like DPR has next to zero chance of long term survival if it is not owned and operated by enthusiasts. Poor leadership is the death of any and all institutions whether it be a government or a business because if the guy at the top does not give a shit, no one else has a chance.
Whether it’s simple mismanagement or plain incompetence, it’s the management who ultimately make or break any business, large or small.

We are all adults, this has been the norm for at least 8 years now, and it will get worse and worse.
We used to talk about Web 2.0. Now it seems to me that we have gone backwards. The ease with which anyone can post his or her fart on the Internet certainly has so many positives (this place is proof of that) but it has created countless self-referential webstars looking for their own little corner in the sun. Making a comparison with cooking, the trend is in having more chefs than dineers.
Why should Amazon spend money on employees and IT infrastructure when, with the Ponzi scheme it has created, it is directly the customers who pay for it to get money to them?

Backward. Full backward.
Last week I was trying to buy a piece of gear. 
The dozens of reviews on youtube were all identical and by asking for some details it was clear that no one had actually used the item but only reviewed it quickly with the usual disclaimers "I was not paid but company X kindly sent it to me blah blah..."
when I realized they were only selling it in the U.S. I wrote to the manufacturer if there was a European warehouse.
The reply was: go ahead and buy it on Amazon USA then when you receive it do a review with BTS photos and we will refund the extra costs via Paypal.
End of sad story 

The problem with Japanese camera makers is that they don't know how to make money anymore. You want to attract younger customers, you have to support the platforms that encourage them to use dedicated cameras. That's about a combination of knowledge and culture. Its a shame that these days its Apple, the king of parental "auto everything", that advocates manual control for its iphone cinematic mode. The Apple way of "manual" of course. Soon they change the taste of an entire generation to believe 60fps is artistic! Dedicated camera needs its own narrative to survive, and we're losing the narrative. 

Yep. It's about the money, not the content.

Yeah, I remember DC Resource too.
Steve's Digicams in the early days was right up there with DPReview for prominence and usefulness!
Have we gone forwards or backwards by replacing all these great web resources with social media influencers?
I think we know the answer.

@Andrew Reidpost mentioning Stevie's Digicams...my go to site when choosing my first digicam, a Powershot A20.

Some weeks ago I remembered it, went to discover when it ended...was when Stevie himself died. 

Loved DC Resource too, Jeff closed the site to work on DPReview, and left some years ago.

Good times.

Yeah. If they were 20 somethings that weren't married with kids they might've gone a different direction, but they're older guys with wives and kids so they were gonna go with whatever site offered them a steady paycheck while allowing them to continue doing what they do. They can always fall back on doing their own thing eventually if they need to. 

I suspect they are simply going where there is another regular presenting income without having to really do any marketing themselves.
Nothing wrong with that and we all have bills to pay and being a self-employed creator has as many risks as it does potential rewards.
I get the impression they have gone from one regular paid position to another as one door closes and another opens.
 

Petapixel has got to be one of the most product-pushy websites in the photography world. I reckon they push a new product every 2 or 3 posts. The site is unusable without an adblocker (although that might have changed... I use an adblocker). Am I the only one who finds that Chris and Jordan going to Petapixel quite a strange choice if they were hoping for any degree of non-bias in their reviews? Also, the user-base (in the comments) seems so toxic. Petapixel is just a blog after all or maybe they're changing?

I'm curious if this is doable should the site really "die"... does anyone remember Geocities, the free web hosting company? There was an effort to basically crawl every Geocities site possible and preserve it, because of all the data that would be lost once Yahoo deleted all the sites. 
Those sites are still available years on at https://www.oocities.org/ and https://www.geocities.ws/
To be clear, they are incomplete archives because it relied on the same crawling tactics that Google and Yahoo use, and if a site wasn't linked elsewhere it likely would fall through the cracks.
But with DPReview I think that would be less of an issue. The primary issue would be hosting all that data, as while it might not cost a lot for Amazon it probably would cost a bit for a normal person. There also then would be the issue of whether Amazon would object and take legal action. Perhaps reaching out to the Internet Archive to see if they could take this project on with some volunteers might be worth doing?
Just an idea that I haven't seen discussed really yet. It would at least preserve and make all that data available.

Archive Team appear to be on the case.
There are some other individual efforts to preserve the studio shot comparison content too apparently.
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/DPReview

Personally. I seem to be able to recall the written word  much more easily, than a rambling video by some person more interested in their own voice than getting to the point. I gave up on YouTube years ago. Sorry to see the demise of DPReview. Slowly we move toward the New Dark Ages ...

Thanks for the explanation. I don't think you understand what literally means. Really. But I will set that aside and get to your more important ignorance.
I was not apologizing for anyone. I was explaining the reality. You don't like it; I don't like it. But it is the reality. I don't apologize for snowstorms. I don't apologize for droughts. We all hate them. But, they all exist. And corporations seek to make money. They are not charities. I wish corporations would give away everything for free. I wish there were no bad weather events. But I am an adult.
I do not forgive you for your rudeness; it is never forgivable. I am more concerned, however, with your sense of entitlement and naivete. 
Do you feel entitled to free services? You were happy to pay nothing for those wonderful DPReview services, and then you complain when the free services are taken away. Are you willing to pay for the services provided by DPReview? I did not see you say that anywhere.
Do you think the DPReview staff are not responsible for never trying to raise money? They didn't lift a finger, and were happy, like you, to just be subsidized by the big, bad corporation. They should be apologizing to all of us who were unaware of the fact that DPReview was unsustainable. 
Cheap talk by you. You are evidently ignorant of the realities of economics. Which are not pretty, not likable, but exist. And don't blame me for informing you with the bad news - corporations are in it for the money and dump any activities that lose money. And, there are people like you who just wish everything was free and are happy to take free services. I was also happy to do so, and I was bamboozled. But I am not surprised the fantasy of free services with no revenue crashed. 
Oh, and I share the view that there should be a special tax on billionaires like Bezos.
 

I mean it quite literally, how does the boot of Jeff Bezos and Amazon taste? This kind of corporation apologia is ruining the world. And this is me being polite.

Sad but true.
I was mentioning the old Web 2.0 definition where users to interact and collaborate with each other as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. This contrasts the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to viewing content in a passive manner.
Well, now everyone is chasing the dream of becoming a "Creator," and they are all so intent on generating "content" that, in many cases, the dialogue has gone to zero.
Twitter is a prime example. Everyone tweets their bullshit but rarely responds to comments but that's the way it is now on all platforms. That is why I was writing that we are back to Web 1.0.
No one is interested in interactivity anymore.
Maybe in Web 5.0 everyone will have their own A.I. that will generate bullshit for us.

If you think that those running DPReview had that much control to do any of those things without Amazon's approval you don't understand how corporations work. That isn't to absolve the people at DPReview of all responsibility, but when you sell your company to a corporation you cease to have that kind of control.

They won't close.
It's a big asset and will have a lot of buyers. Current staff might go over to the new non-Amazon site or they will leave and do something else, which for me would be a good thing as they're not really up to the job.
DPR has a ton of camera info that would be very sad to lose from the internet, the database of specs, and historic reviews are part of the camera world's culture and it would be vandalism of the highest order if some idiot decided to delete it all rather than keep it online. It costs almost nothing to keep a website online and I am surprised Amazon is making such deep cuts at all, as DPReview is hardly likely to be a huge loss making part of the company.
What are the REAL reasons the site is closing? It surely can't be due to money. Perhaps a big fall out at the top between the DPReview management and Amazon?
If Amazon really are looking to save a few thousand dollars running DPReview which drives a ton of traffic to Amazon for camera purchases, then how bad must it be at Amazon?!
They were hiring like crazy during covid, big profit boom, then suddenly they can't afford to run a camera blog?
Even I can afford to run a fucking camera blog.
I smell something fishy.
Either the news is fake and they already have a buyer lined up. Chris and Jordan seemed really chirpy in their jokey closing video.
Or they are all hired already by a new site and will simply rebrand the existing one.
There is simply no way they will delete it.
The SEO and Google links alone are worth redirecting to a new site domain.
Why bin it?
They're not telling the truth.

Terrible move from amazon. they got not culture. Oh, hold it, they do: reset culture.