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Claiming they're "no longer providing a positive, useful experience" for the vast majority of its users, IMDB has announced that as of February 20, 2017, their message boards will be no more:
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.
[...] 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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Celestial on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:50PM
Unfortunately, local message boards and commenting systems are going the way of the dodo bird. It's a combination of companies no longer willing to invest the time and money required to properly set up and maintain message boards and/or commenting systems, and the majority of people spending most of their online time on Facebook/Google Plus/Twitter these days. The IMDb message boards are just another casualty.
My primary two hobbies are comic books and video games. Over the past six years or so, I've noticed that more and more comic book publishers and video game publishers are forgoing message boards entirely, and telling people to use Facebook groups, Google Plus communities, or Reddit to discuss their comic books or video games. DC Comics for example used to have a thriving forum, but shut it down in 2011 because they no longer wanted to deal with the trolls and flame wars.
Back in 2007, two friends and I established a forum dedicated to discussing... you guessed it, comic books and video games. For the first four years or so, it was a thriving little community with about 175 or so active members. In 2012, I noticed it started diminishing. I managed to get an up tick in 2014, but by 2016 participation absolutely plummeted. The other two administrators haven't logged on in over a year. I asked several people why they stopped coming. Every single one of them said that they spend their online time now on Facebook or Google Plus and don't want to be bothered with using a forum. You just can't beat that. Now the forum has about eight active members. It has become more and more difficult to justify the hosting cost.
Now, I probably suck as a forum administrator. I don't really doubt that. But the death of message boards (perhaps outside of the technology communities), and the move to social media is a definite pattern, and a sad one at that.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @09:18PM
It's a continuation of the trend of abolishing personal homepages.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by ewk on Thursday February 09 2017, @09:08AM
More like: your facebook page is your home page.
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