Evo magazine - seems like everyone's leaving

[limpsfield]

Th Crack Fox- Please stop sitting on the fence and tell us what you really think.

Agreed it does seem like they are hoovering everyone up.

Appreciate the opinion, I really don't know where it is going to go but will be interesting to see how, where and if it evolves.

[trickywoo]

Slightly OT but did anyone see Dickie and his Mrs on one of those place in the country type property programmes a few months ago?

[mwstewart]

RWD cossie wil said:

darth_pies said:

I particularly like this bit of PH-baiting nonsense on their About page:

"GAMERS HAVE GOT TWITCH, TRAVELLERS HAVE GOT TRIP ADVISOR AND FASHION FANS HAVE GOT, OH, SOMETHING OR OTHER TOO. BUT PEOPLE WHO ARE INTO CARS HAVE GOT NOWHERE. THERE'S NO GRAND-SCALE ONLINE MOTORING COMMUNITY WHERE PEOPLE CAN MEET AND SHARE VIDEO, COMMENTS, INFORMATION AND OPINION. DRIVETRIBE WILL CHANGE THAT. AND THEN SOME."

- RICHARD HAMMOND


Only the TG boys could get away with such brazen BS!

To be fair, PH is more of a "mild passing interest in cars" than a serious petrolhead/ drivers forum. There are more threads moaning about people being knobs, registrations people don't like & the holier than thou brigade in SPL than there are genuinely into cars!

Exactly that - General Gassing especially. It's been a decline over the past few years and I do wonder sometimes! Thankfully there is a smattering of real enthusiast stuff left in Readers Cars and a few other sub forums.

[CS Garth]

It seems a bit premature to write it off before it has launched (call me old fashioned) but it will be interesting to see what kind of community it will be. It initially felt like it could get hijacked by the the readership of top gear magazine (feels like aimed at teenagers) so the new hires should bring some gravitas and quantity and attract a different demo graphic. The 'tribe' element suggests that the belief is that different groups can do-exist - will be interested to see how they curate an ecosystem where the beardies can co-exist with the innit brigade.

Looking at the seed capital the 4 of them have whacked a cheeky mill or so in each from memory with some vc matching it if I recall correctly so they're hardly all in. Personally I don't think print is dead, people may elect to receive a magazine in e format but as we have seen with the kindle the e format has levelled off for now anyway.

Edited by CS Garth on Saturday 22 October 09:35

[alock]

Trying to cover all motoring interests under one umbrella is the problem. Even EVO with the narrow remit of 'the thrill of driving' struggled.

Some people want to read about the 8th iteration of a minor face-lift of the latest Porsche and how it's 0.05s quicker around a track. Even though they are only building 5 and they've all pre-sold.

Others want to read about the latest German diesel hatchbacks and try to decide whether the 5 star car is worth the £300/month lease when the 4 star runner up is available for £200/month.

There are many other groups like the above and each think of themselves as enthusiasts while taking the piss out of the other groups. An online community allows the conflict to grow whereas a print publication can manage it by allocating several pages to each group.

Social media breeds conflict. I think pistonheads does OK because lots of the contributors thrive on the conflict.

[CraigyMc]

alock said:

I think pistonheads does OK because lots of the contributors thrive on the conflict.

Clearly wrong, as are most people on PH.

[dufflecoat]

Drive tribe is to motoring journalism as Uber is to Taxi's and Air BnB is to Hotels. The community will become the content.

These vloggers will lead a "stream" each and the collaborated content becomes drive tribe. Gives them all one roof and us one portal.

Very smart move and will succeed. Advertising revenue, enormous.

[amgmcqueen]

Evo magazine used to brilliant before it was bought out by Porsche.

[hufggfg]

The Crack Fox said:

DriveTribe looks like utter tosh. They've signed up anyone and everyone who can hold a felt-tipped pen and write an X. Did anyone who applied to be a leader (even the language makes me cringe) get refused? No. And that's because they are hoovering up anyone who can create content (good or bad) that they can use to help flog advertising. There's some big names there, and some good writers too (hello, Evo boys) but they're going for quantity over quality, it's about SEO and selling advertising, and it's much harder to turn a profit online than it is in print. Do not underestimate the cost of shooting anything worth reading, and for each Evo-esque feature on driveltribe [sic] there'll be a million Schmee wannabes lurking behind the bins at Harrods snapping Arab's badly parked supercars. And adverts. Lots and lots and lots of adverts.

This.

Pretty much the same as my thoughts about it. I even hate the concept of "Tribes"... Car lovers are a broad bunch, and I'd much rather we all focused on the shared love of cars, rather than some marketing led b*llocks about separating into "Tribes".

[darth_pies]

dufflecoat said:

Drive tribe is to motoring journalism as Uber is to Taxi's and Air BnB is to Hotels. The community will become the content.

These vloggers will lead a "stream" each and the collaborated content becomes drive tribe. Gives them all one roof and us one portal.

Very smart move and will succeed. Advertising revenue, enormous.

I agree that it has the ingredients to attract ad revenue, but the question is whether it is ENOUGH revenue to sustain the wage bill for the talent involved AND pay for the creation of high quality content. I think you'd be surprised how much traffic a site needs to generate to make serious money. The successful big blogs like Engadget and stuff like Mail Online make money by being content curation and 'churnalism' factories, processing press releases into news and monetising a very large and diverse audience. They aren't shelling out for video crews to film at the Nurburgring or spending a week in Wales testing hypercars with helicopter tracking shots....

[danllama]

There is a problem. It's not unique. CarThrottle is pretty damn huge. It's almost too big and complicated, which is where DriveTribe could snatch audience.

[NordicCrankShaft]

I gave up my subscription when I moved out of the UK. Every now and again I see it on sale at the local newsagent for £12 a pop. It asn't worth it then even more so now!

The comment about it being Porsche monthly is bang on too.

[LayZ]

Couple of observations from me:

1) Just like The Grand Tour, there seems to be PR machine at work for months before the public sees anything of DriveTribe. In internet startup land this is a no-no.

2) CarThrottle do well with the buzzfeed-esque clickbait and the content for millennials. I suppose DT will be similar but aimed at Gen X and Y; but are they as into that kind of content? Personally I don't think so. PH laps up Harris's long-form content, and has little time for '7 ways to know your car is too loud'.

3) Others have failed before, see //DRIVE, Drivers Republic and the struggles of Motor Trend to monetise their (excellent) content. That said, now might be the right time where the others were too early.

Will be interesting to see how it pans out.

[George111]

Subscribe to Readly online (or the Readly app, same thing) . . .£7/month and you get 100's of magazines including Car, Autocar, Top gear and several others, plus several motorbike, photography, news and Hi-Fi magazines. Loads of fashion, style and woman's mags there to for the less powerfully built PH membership

I've not bought a magazine for about a year now, iPad is all you need, or a laptop, Android thing or even a PC with a web browser - it works on them all and you can share a subscription amongst your family, 5 people I think.

Fantastic value for money and has helped me to read more than I did before. Also, to those who like the artwork in magazines, if you use an iPad or PC with a suitably good monitor, you still get that high def glossy artwork

[Digitalize]

I think there might be two halfs of DriveTribe in a way, a more professional side, possibly behind a paywall, and then an amateur side more like YouTube just for cars, that's free.

[sagarich]

Dickie Meaden on the way out too?

[Dave Hedgehog]

mwstewart said:

RWD cossie wil said:

darth_pies said:

I particularly like this bit of PH-baiting nonsense on their About page:

"GAMERS HAVE GOT TWITCH, TRAVELLERS HAVE GOT TRIP ADVISOR AND FASHION FANS HAVE GOT, OH, SOMETHING OR OTHER TOO. BUT PEOPLE WHO ARE INTO CARS HAVE GOT NOWHERE. THERE'S NO GRAND-SCALE ONLINE MOTORING COMMUNITY WHERE PEOPLE CAN MEET AND SHARE VIDEO, COMMENTS, INFORMATION AND OPINION. DRIVETRIBE WILL CHANGE THAT. AND THEN SOME."

- RICHARD HAMMOND


Only the TG boys could get away with such brazen BS!

To be fair, PH is more of a "mild passing interest in cars" than a serious petrolhead/ drivers forum. There are more threads moaning about people being knobs, registrations people don't like & the holier than thou brigade in SPL than there are genuinely into cars!

Exactly that - General Gassing especially. It's been a decline over the past few years and I do wonder sometimes! Thankfully there is a smattering of real enthusiast stuff left in Readers Cars and a few other sub forums.

its become the mail equivalent of mums net, drive a v8 or a little quickly and your social out of touch you have to worship oil burners or EV's, cars no real petrol head would ever look at IMO

[astrsxi77]

slk 32 said:

I used to buy it religiously every month up to about two years ago. I found that Nick Trott and Dan Prosser were a bit anodyne compared to Jethro and Henry, plus I'd got to that age where I was gravitating more towards octane and cars I'd lusted after in my youth (group B etc) rather than the latest Megane etc

I can't help think it's the slow death of print media. As someone else has said it's like Drivers Republic which was the forerunner.

I very much agree with this.

I was no great fan of Catchpole when he first arrived - what does this child know about cars? (even though we're of similar age!) - but was quickly proven wrong. His avoidance of the modern hyperbolic - everything is "epic"..."EPIC" - style is refreshing.

I think at least part of the reason for the drop in EVO's readership must be due to the age of the readers themselves.

As I get older, my interest in modern cars decreases; their irrelevant gadgetry; the unending bloating; Diesel Sline, Diesel M, Diesel SUV coupe-cross. It's a total bore, as was seeing unjust 5-star ratings thrown about like confetti, so I stopped buying EVO as my interest ebbed away.

Now I would far rather read about classics and youngtimers, as the Germans call them.

So we seem to have the same idea, and there must be many others like us of a certain age, shunning magazines like EVO. You know, those who roll their eyes every time the new 400bhp hot hatch breaks a Nurburgring lap record, sparking yet more tedious column inches and speculation.

[Devil2575]

Dave Hedgehog said:

mwstewart said:

RWD cossie wil said:

darth_pies said:

I particularly like this bit of PH-baiting nonsense on their About page:

"GAMERS HAVE GOT TWITCH, TRAVELLERS HAVE GOT TRIP ADVISOR AND FASHION FANS HAVE GOT, OH, SOMETHING OR OTHER TOO. BUT PEOPLE WHO ARE INTO CARS HAVE GOT NOWHERE. THERE'S NO GRAND-SCALE ONLINE MOTORING COMMUNITY WHERE PEOPLE CAN MEET AND SHARE VIDEO, COMMENTS, INFORMATION AND OPINION. DRIVETRIBE WILL CHANGE THAT. AND THEN SOME."

- RICHARD HAMMOND


Only the TG boys could get away with such brazen BS!

To be fair, PH is more of a "mild passing interest in cars" than a serious petrolhead/ drivers forum. There are more threads moaning about people being knobs, registrations people don't like & the holier than thou brigade in SPL than there are genuinely into cars!

Exactly that - General Gassing especially. It's been a decline over the past few years and I do wonder sometimes! Thankfully there is a smattering of real enthusiast stuff left in Readers Cars and a few other sub forums.

its become the mail equivalent of mums net, drive a v8 or a little quickly and your social out of touch you have to worship oil burners or EV's, cars no real petrol head would ever look at IMO

No that just shows the diversity of the forum. Your problem is that you have a blinkered view of what makes an enthusiast. There are loads of sub forums to cater to everyones specific requirements, but if you only ever hang out in GG then what do you expect?

[Davey S2]

The articles in Drivers republic were superb. It suffered because there wasn't enough of them or other content and the forum never took off.

I cancelled EVO ages ago. I like Octane but it makes you feel amazingly poor when you read it.