MovieChat Forums > Blade Runner (1982) Discussion > IMDB shutting down?

IMDB shutting down?

posted 7 years ago by edisonnosidE
8 replies | jump to latest

I sure am going to miss you folk.

"IMDb Message Boards Announcement

IMDb is the world's most popular and authoritative source for movie, TV and celebrity content. As part of our ongoing effort to continually evaluate and enhance the customer experience on IMDb, we have decided to disable IMDb's message boards on February 20, 2017. This includes the Private Message system. After in-depth discussion and examination, we have concluded that IMDb's message boards are no longer providing a positive, useful experience for the vast majority of our more than 250 million monthly users worldwide. The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic.

Increasingly, IMDb customers have migrated to IMDb's social media accounts as the primary place they choose to post comments and communicate with IMDb's editors and one another. IMDb's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/imdb) and official Twitter account (https://twitter.com/imdb) have an audience of more than 10 million engaged fans. IMDb also maintains official accounts on Snapchat (https://www.snapchat.com/add/imdblive), Pinterest (https://www.pinterest.com/imdbofficial/), YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/imdb), and Tumblr (http://imdb.tumblr.com/).

Because IMDb's message boards continue to be utilized by a small but passionate community of IMDb users, we announced our decision to disable our message boards on February 3, 2017 but will leave them open for two additional weeks so that users will have ample time to archive any message board content they'd like to keep for personal use. During this two-week transition period, which concludes on February 19, 2017, IMDb message board users can exchange contact information with any other board users they would like to remain in communication with (since once we shut down the IMDb message boards, users will no longer be able to send personal messages to one another). We regret any disappointment or frustration IMDb message board users may experience as a result of this decision.

IMDb is passionately committed to providing innovative ways for our hundreds of millions of users to engage and communicate with one another. We will continue to enhance our current offerings and launch new features in 2017 and beyond that will help our customers communicate and express themselves in meaningful ways while leveraging emerging technologies and opportunities."

I disagree, FWIW.

Impossible is illogical.
Lack of evidence is not proof.
 +  = 

[–] CremersAlex 7 years ago

R.I.P. IMDb's message boards!

(I only visited the MBs of Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049 and A Space Odyssey)

Alex

[–] BB-15 7 years ago

Good luck to all the "Blade Runner" Board regulars.

As for me, I've been on the IMDb boards since 1999.
I'll have to figure out how to get and keep longterm internet movie discussions going but it won't be easy.

IMDb boards were some of the best designed I've seen on the web. (In some ways the best.)
And Facebook definitely will not be a good replacement or YouTube which is also poorly designed in terms of keeping track of comments.

Imo at least, BB ;-)

it is just in my opinion - imo - 🌈

[–] Quest_Shield 7 years ago

I don't post here much anymore but very sad the forums are closing.
This forum below might be still going though..used to post there back in the day.

http://bladezone.com/forum.html

Good luck chaps, and enjoy the sequel.

[–] jimmymack7 7 years ago

IMDB dropped the ball on this one folks. There are thousands if not tens of thousands of people that use these forum's daily. The BladeZone is a good alternative for BR fans that want to continue discussions about the film.

"Lófaszt, nehogy már. Te vagy a Blade ... Blade Runner"

[–] DrAndreiSmyslov 7 years ago

There are thousands if not tens of thousands of people that use these forum's daily.

Seems like a good guess, but websites do not necessarily base their decisions on participation quantity, but more on total site visitor percentage...weighed against the cost to provide that site feature.

With 250 million monthly visitors, obviously a very small percentage of their site's total monthly visitors participate in the forums. A wild guess: less than 2-3% of their total monthly visitors actually participate in the forums.

Even without the numbers, you can gauge that by the activity in the forums. Can you imagine if the majority of those 250 million monthly visitors actually participated in the forums? It would render the forums unusable. You create a thread and it would cycle off the news feed within an hour or more with tens of millions participating.

Further speculation, no doubt Amazon marketing has the spreadsheets to show who is buying from the site. Did the spreadsheets reveal that forum participants had a dismally low purchase percentage compared to the millions of visitors who avoided the forums?

Additional speculation, how many of those millions of visitors who avoid the forums and actually generated site purchases, complain to IMDB about the forum participants infesting the site with major spoilers? It's not uncommon hundreds of members place major spoilers in the thread title....and that thread title could be displayed on the movie's front page, making it impossible for those millions of non-forum product-purchasing visitors to be exposed to major spoilers.

That said, that could be resolved by simply removing the "forum sample" from the front page, but it could be one of many reasons Amazon chose to shut the forums down.

Many members are currently claiming in various forums this is going to devastate their monthly visit total. I say no, it will make a very tiny, perhaps even microscopic, dent. I dare say a majority of the thousands of disgruntled forum participants currently protesting the forum shutdown, will continue using the IMDB site.

-------------------------
One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces.

[–] raincoatriver 7 years ago

'Normal people' who visit these films will surely feel the presence of flagging ghosts nagging at their soulless preferences.

"gonna throw, my raincoat in the river...gonna toss, my umbrella in the sea"...Sammy Turner.

[–] jmillerdp 7 years ago

It might as well be shutting down! It will lose half its value once the Discussion Boards are gone.

I. Drink. Your. Milkshake! [slurp!] I DRINK IT UP! - Daniel Plainview - There Will Be Blood

[–] kaskait 7 years ago

That is the point, I believe.

IMDB is over. It's gone. Whatever is left will be eaten up further by Amazon.

They don't want people naysaying the production hype. It isn't about trolls. it's all about the narrative.