Drivers Republic (also referred to as “DR”) was a web-based digital platform comprising a bespoke social community for drivers, an online magazine and a video channel. The title was privately owned and managed by British-based NewMedia Republic Limited. It ceased publication in August 2009 due to differences over the direction taken by its owners and the creative team that produced its magazine and video content. After closing down the original website, the Drivers Republic domain resurfaced in a new site called SkiddMark.

History

Drivers Republic was founded in March 2008 by Steve Davies together with Richard Meaden; a co-founder of

Evo (magazine) ''Evo'' is a British automobile magazine dedicated to performance cars, from hot hatches to supercars. History In 1995, then Harpenden-based farmer and property developer Harry Metcalfe had become involved in car tests for magazine publishers, ...

, Jethro Bovingdon; former deputy-Editor of Evo magazine and Chris Harris; former road test editor of Autocar magazine. They were soon joined by Neil Carey, formerly the designer at Evo magazine. Davies was the only non-journalist of the founding team, being a former management consultancy partner in

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Consulting and managing partner in

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Integrated Marketing. It was during his time at Experian and working together with Hitwise that he gained a profile for advising businesses such as

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and

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on social networking and internet marketing. Davies provided the initial investment to create and launch Drivers Republic. Driver's Republic ceased operations on 11 August 2009. Steve Davies explained the shutdown via a blog post on the site: "There has been plenty of speculation on other sites and forums about the reasons why this has occurred, and despite the first impressions that it must have been for financial reasons, nothing could be further from the truth. Thanks to your participation and the generous support of the automotive industry we were in rude health and looking forward to a bumper year, but differences in our vision about future priorities have led to a parting of ways."

Website and Content

The content provided included automotive news, first drives, columns,

streaming video Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

, downloadable audio tracks and photos. In addition Drivers Republic publishes digital magazine features (ezines) up to twice a week. These features contained words, pictures and embedded video clips. Following the shutdown of the site, most of this feature content disappeared from its servers. DR’s magazines were initially published on the Zmags publishing platform, then by Texterity, one of the largest digital publishers in the world. The magazines could be viewed either within the Drivers Republic

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google Search, Google, Facebook, Amaz ...

or after being downloaded onto home computers or mobile handsets. DR's social community allows users to create profiles including photos, videos and blogs, join groups, add friends and publish events, similar functionality to that offered by

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, with the combination of a MySpace personal page to provide users with a central repository for their news, photos and stories accessible from anywhere on the web.

Partnerships

In July 2008 Drivers Republic formed a partnership with

Silverstone Silverstone is a village and civil parish in Northamptonshire, England. It is about from Towcester on the former A43 main road, from the M1 motorway junction 15A and about from the M40 motorway junction 10, Northampton, Milton Keynes and B ...

Circuits for DR to use the Grand Prix circuit and associated straights to set lap-times and gather performance data.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Official website – now updated in SkiddMark
Automotive websites Privately held companies of the United Kingdom