Tweakers (formerly called Tweakers.net) is a Dutch technology website featuring news and information about hardware, software, games and the Internet. The name is derived from the verb "tweaking", which is a word geeks use to refer to optimisation of hardware.
Tweakers has grown substantially since its conception. Nowadays, it publishes news, reviews, features and video reports about technology subjects, with a strong focus on the Netherlands and Belgium.
Tweakers has more features for the computer enthusiast, such as reviews, bi-monthly Best Buy guides, a classifieds section for jobs and used hardware, the Pricewatch and the Shop Survey, among others. While the majority of the reviews are written in Dutch, several articles covering non-standard topics are translated into English.
Tweakers currently has more than 1.000.000 members and its forum has over 29 million posts. It has won several awards, including "(Dutch) website of the year" in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
History
The website was founded in 1998 by
Femme Taken, a computer enthusiast, under the name ''World of Tweaking'' as a student's hobby project to offer a Dutch alternative to hardware review sites like
Tom's Hardware Guide.
As of March 2006, Tweakers has been taken over by the Dutch
media conglomerate
A media conglomerate, media group, or media institution is a company that owns numerous companies involved in mass media enterprises, such as music, television, radio, publishing, motion pictures, theme parks, or the Internet. According to t ...
VNU, now known as The
Nielsen Company
Nielsen Holdings plc is an American information, data and market measurement firm. Nielsen operates in over 100 countries and employs approximately 44,000 people worldwide.
The company was listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and use ...
. However,
VNU Media has become owner of the website after The Nielsen Company had sold its Business Media division to
private equity
In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a typ ...
firm
3i.
In October 2012, Tweakers launched a new design, designed by Femme Taken, the founder. However, the new design met with criticism from their community. A couple of days later, Tweakers launched a new feature which enabled the community to change the appearance of the website.
The current
responsive design was introduced on 6 January 2014. The Android and iOS apps were removed from their respective stores on 7 October 2014.
In February 2014 Tweakers significantly improved the price comparison tool for sim only contracts.
In June 2014 Tweakers added prices of Belgian webshops to the ''Pricewatch'', which now shows prices from Dutch and Belgian webshops.
In April 2015 Tweakers launched a completely new
logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordm ...
to be uniformly used throughout the website.
Gathering of Tweakers
An important area of the site is the
forum
Forum or The Forum (plural forums or fora) may refer to:
Common uses
*Forum (legal), designated space for public expression in the United States
*Forum (Roman), open public space within a Roman city
**Roman Forum, most famous example
*Internet ...
. Tweakers's forum is known as the Gathering of Tweakers (often abbreviated as ''GoT''). The forum is mainly focused on technical subjects and tries to maintain a relatively high standard of posting. It has a fairly strong moderation policy, especially when compared to other online discussion forums. Users of the forum are strongly urged to read the
FAQ and to have invested a fair amount of his/her own time into finding an answer, either on GoT using the search tools, or anywhere else on the Internet, before asking a question.
Tweakers Awards
Tweakers Awards (formerly known as "Tweakers Gouden Steeksleutel Awards" 2007 to 2011
) is a contest in which members can choose the best products from different technology categories.
References
External links
* {{Official website
Computing websites
Dutch-language websites
Dutch news websites
3i Group companies
Internet properties established in 1998
1998 establishments in the Netherlands