« Previous post
Next post »

May 14, 2007

Amazon Acquires dpreview.com

Duncan Riley

28 comments »

dpreview.pngAmazon have announced the acquisition of the digital camera information and review site dpreview.com.

UK based dpreview.com was founded in 1998 by Phil Askey as a site that publishes “unbiased reviews and original content regarding the latest in digital cameras, and offers a host of features and forums designed to make it easy for consumers to find the camera that’s right for them”.

“Dpreview.com is by far the most authoritative source anywhere for straight talk about new digital cameras,” said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a media release. “We at Amazon.com have been their fans for a long time, and we extend a big welcome to the dpreview.com team.”

Site founder Askey said that the sites acquisition by Amazon would allow him to devote more time to expanding and improving features on the site.

Dpreview.com has in excess of 7 million unique viewers monthly. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 7:53 am and is filed under Web 2.0 News & Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

Trackbacks/Pings (Trackback URL)

  1. Motherduce: The Blog

    May 14th, 2007 at 1:16 pm

  2. I’ve joined the dpreview.com team at Jaysen Marais

    March 19th, 2008 at 2:42 pm

Comments

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  1. Edu

    May 14th, 2007 at 7:59 am

    Broken link

  2. d70

    May 14th, 2007 at 8:06 am

    Another lucky dude!!! great site but very very bad message board application. now they will have money and time do an upgrade.

  3. Duncan Riley

    May 14th, 2007 at 8:08 am

    Edu
    thanks and fixed.

  4. Kewtr

    May 14th, 2007 at 9:09 am

    Not lucky, this is a guy that really creates actual content. Not aggregated, or summarized, they actually write it. That’s tough work, and kudos to them for the sale.

  5. Jon Wu

    May 14th, 2007 at 9:13 am

    so for how much did it sell???

  6. mathew

    May 14th, 2007 at 9:23 am

    hope they take this uk labor-of-love content site and basically leave it alone like they did with imdb.

    as per kewtr: building out industry-leading content is non-trivial

  7. EH

    May 14th, 2007 at 9:26 am

    Seconding mathew.

  8. Ming

    May 14th, 2007 at 9:30 am

    This is great for the people behind dpreview.com. Been a long time reader of the site and they have by far the best, relevant and original content. Hopefully, Amazon will leave the editorial content alone and bring funding so that they can build out the site.

    Congratulations to dpreview.com

  9. Startup Booster Blog

    May 14th, 2007 at 9:43 am

    Good for Askey. This shows that you don’t need to always have a service or a product to be taken over by big players.

  10. Dexter Zaf

    May 14th, 2007 at 9:54 am

    One big paycheck. This will be a good addition for amazon.com to have a site dedicated on Digital camera review.

  11. Steve

    May 14th, 2007 at 10:28 am

    Amazon understands that in order to sell products, you need to create research tools to help people understand your products. What makes Amazon different more than just a store is that it allows users and experts to produce content about products. It makes great sense fore Amazon to take such a great content producer and add value to the shopping expereince. I think of Amazon as the “long tail of product metatdata” and this certainly fits the bill of what I would expect from them. I hope they leave it alone, too.

  12. met

    May 14th, 2007 at 10:41 am

    No more price comparisons on the site? :) Not that I care.

  13. pallet jack

    May 14th, 2007 at 10:48 am

    Great buy - 7 million hits a month; wow - that will most defintly bring some revenue - to the site ..

    - Being bought out by someone who sells every camera your review - is a good thing….

    now if Nokia bought them Iwould worry,…

  14. Chris Lea

    May 14th, 2007 at 10:49 am

    Wow. That’s going to be really interesting. As part of a growing population of budding advanced hobbyist / semi-pro photographers, I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say that I find that site invaluable. As well as an inspiration for our reviews. Hopefully they won’t change it too much.

  15. Ed

    May 14th, 2007 at 11:02 am

    Great news! Congrats to Phil Askey for what was hopefully a sizeable sum of $. He deserves it for all the work. Like others said, hopefully Amazon won’t muck around with it. I’ve used dpreview for a few years for all my digital camera decisions.

  16. Terry Ng

    May 14th, 2007 at 11:09 am

    Phil actually wrote the message board software himself. It’s completely custom.

  17. Thomas Park

    May 14th, 2007 at 11:54 am

    This is a huge win all around IMHO. Amazon’s customer service is great and they’re not closed on certain religious holidays; I’d love to see this bring Amazon into a position where they can be a viable marketplace for pro photographers.

  18. Peter Cooper

    May 14th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

    Congratulations!

    This does seem like an interesting sale though. With the amount of pageviews they’re pushing (120m a month) coupled with the great commissions you can get on traffic coming through looking for camera stuff, I can’t see their revenue being anything below a few million.. and that means Amazon must have put up a serious amount of dough for the site, and I bet they’ll become the main seller/affiliate pretty fast ;-)

  19. DinoHorse

    May 14th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

    I really hate when this things happen… DPReview is such a great usefull and neutral service. Now that Amazon has it under his umbrella, things will change, like it or not… it will be plagued with Amazon advertisements, and I will start trusting less on DPs reviews.

  20. PENIX

    May 14th, 2007 at 3:31 pm

    I doubt it will change all that much. All the links will point to Amazon for purchase, and that’s about it.

  21. STFU

    May 14th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

    my guess is 15-25 million.

  22. nomadicalloy

    May 14th, 2007 at 7:40 pm

    I hope we will still see great review from dpreview and forums.

  23. David Mackey

    May 14th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    Wow, that’s pretty sweet for Askey and co.

  24. Ryan

    May 14th, 2007 at 8:43 pm

    Congrats to Askey! As a fan of the site since ‘99, the purchase is well deserved and I think it’s great that he likely has a nice nest egg to retire on now and re-invest into his site.

  25. Tony Chen

    May 15th, 2007 at 7:09 pm

    Amazon bough them because they need the product images and descriptions from Sony. Sony started sending out DMCA notices to Amazon regarding the use. I know this from the inside.

  26. Burkie

    May 16th, 2007 at 5:46 am

    Nobody in his/her right mind will believe that the site will remain the same. It was excellent as long as it lasted. Phil worked his a** off to make great reviews - sometimes to my utter disappointment about a certain attractive model - and while doing so he saved me a bundle of money which I might have spent on the wrong camera. The forums were great for insider tips and exchange on camera flaws etc. I’m afraid that they may be edited for “malicious content” in the future… The good times are over now, and I would guess that 6 months from now we will see changes in attitude and bias towards certain brands… Phil, take your money and enjoy life! No hard feelings - your deserve it and I would possibly do the same. Thank you for your great contribution to the camera world!

« Previous post
Next post »