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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: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:44PM
Google Plus, and Google Plus communities.
This part sounds fishy to me. No one uses Google Plus except maybe the Linux kernel people. Google tried really hard to push it and it bombed.
(Score: 2) by Celestial on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:50PM
It's certainly not popular in general, but in certain circles it is. For whatever reason, Google Plus has a near stranglehold on tabletop gaming discussion and there's a lot of overlap with tabletop gamers and video gamers.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:00PM
There are also lots of photographers, as they had a great photos capability that has since been extracted out as a separate application. It's still quite well peopled though, with a passionate bunch of folks across a wide range of topics. I always likened it to wondering around at a party and joining interesting conversations. You do need to take the time to find people and groups that interest you though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:41PM
The thing is, google pushed it so hard that it became a red flag for me. Without that I'd probably be using it.