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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday February 08 2017, @03:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-a-wrap dept.

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.

Variety, BBC, TheWrap.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:23PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:23PM (#464590)

    They were created in an era of "Why, if we add social features, we'll become the next MySpace" back when MySpace was cool and not a punchline.

    Then they discovered that rather than providing them with a profitable free community they can stripmine for data, what they actually got was nobody wants to pay for that worthless data and rather than getting a free community all they get is extra work erasing all the troll posts pointing out that the female actress from Ghostbusters sucks.

    Took them awhile to figure out merely adding comment don't magically create billions.

    "We thought having a comment driven website would provide us with Facebook style financial numbers, but instead we got Soylent News style financial numbers, so ..."

    Basically we're seeing a slow motion death of social media. Remember when "homepages" like yahoo died? Someday, probably soon, that's how people will look at facebook. "Oh they're still on line, no kidding? I remember that site."

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:49PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:49PM (#464606)

    Then they discovered that rather than providing them with a profitable free community they can stripmine for data, what they actually got was nobody wants to pay for that worthless data and rather than getting a free community all they get is extra work erasing all the troll posts pointing out that the female actress from Ghostbusters sucks.

    The problem I have with this analysis (besides the Ghostbusters comment: how is it a "troll" to state the truth?) is that it ignores the value of traffic. Isn't it normally a good thing to have lots of traffic on your site? That means more pageviews, and more ad impressions (not everyone uses an ad-blocker, in fact it's probably a minority still), and more ad dollars. Yeah, I understand that they have to expend some effort in deleting the actual trolls and messages that go beyond the acceptable-use policy limits, but surely IMDB is making more money from all that traffic than that costs, right?

    By shutting down the forums, they're going to lose out on a tremendous amount of traffic, I think. The people hanging out on there aren't going to want to read the movie info pages over and over; they're hanging out on there because of the message forums.

    Now of course, my rebuttal here really depends on the *actual* costs of managing the forums versus the actual revenues generated by them. I have no way of knowing either; only IMDB would know that detailed information.

    Basically we're seeing a slow motion death of social media. Remember when "homepages" like yahoo died? Someday, probably soon, that's how people will look at facebook.

    Again, I have a problem with this. To me, pseudonymous message forums are not "social media". We've had message forums on the internet since the very early days, with USENET (though those weren't pseudonymous), and then later with other web-based message forums that were around long before Facebook and friends. Slashdot was around quite some time before the term "social media" even existed. It's not the same thing. There's some similarities of course: both let you post message, but "social media" really goes farther, letting you post pictures and videos, letting you "like" things (and your "like" being attributed to you), letting you "follow" things and repost things from others, etc. A traditional message forum like this, or like IMDB's, does not do all these things. You make up a fake name, post messages to that, and that's about it. There might be a user-based moderation system where people can mod things up or down, but those moderations are generally not attributed to any user like a Facebook "like". There's no way to "follow" things and for your "friends" to see what you're "following". You could say the traditional forums are quite "primitive" in comparison to social media (though I assert that this is a good thing).

    I hope that Facebook does die; I think social media like that is a cancer. However, traditional message/discussion forums, oriented towards specific topics like this one, I think are quite valuable and I don't think they're likely to go anywhere.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:59PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 08 2017, @04:59PM (#464612)

      I think are quite valuable and I don't think they're likely to go anywhere.

      Truth is probably in between. I admit Yahoo is not dead, but its still "not so alive anymore".

      The thing about businesses is they don't admit defeat too well for various financialization reasons. IMDB was totally "we gonna be MySpace 2.0 billionaires" and anything less that that is collapse rm -Rf / the whole thing. Whereas I agree hobbyist level sites are unkillable. Partially for technology reasons, Slashdot used to have a data center, well after it moved out from under the desk, and now its just a big linode account. Maybe in 10-20 years something slashdot like will be a raspberry pi 100.0 distribution running off someones old cellphone charger. That works for hobby not business.

      Also WRT the increased traffic, I suspect a huge problem is the people least likely to use adblock come there like once a year, and the people most likely come there with an adblocker and shitpost for hours per day, and they make no money at all off the latter although most of their costs are also from the latter, so the axe falls. Note that legacy print media has mostly given up on free access for eyeballs because not enough ads are seen to make up for the costs, if even the clickbait experts can't profit, nobody can.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:55PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:55PM (#464674) Journal

        Whereas I agree hobbyist level sites are unkillable.

        You are aware that IMDb started as a hobbyist site? (Well, actually when it started it wasn't even yet a site, as the WWW didn't yet exist).

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:59PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:59PM (#464722)

          Interesting but not relevant. 19 years ago it was an early Amazon.com purchase and I checked and it still is. Its as solidly megacorporation as megacorporation can be.

          HP was started in a garage which has approximately nothing to do with anything in 2017.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:27PM

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:27PM (#464740) Journal

            Interesting but not relevant.

            It is relevant, as it shows that a hobbyist site actually can be killed. Namely by being bought by a business.

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by Celestial on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:12PM

      by Celestial (4891) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:12PM (#464615) Journal

      As I commented below, the traffic on message boards in general has steadily dropped for several years now. Unfortunately, most people are content with Facebook, Facebook groups, Google Plus, and Google Plus communities. With the dwindling traffic, meteoric rise of ad blocker usage, and dealing with trolls and flamewars, Amazon most likely decided that it was no longer worth maintaining the IMDb message boards like many other companies have decided as well.

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:44PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:44PM (#464631)

        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

          by Celestial (4891) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @05:50PM (#464635) Journal

          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

            by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:00PM (#464642)

            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

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:41PM (#464662)

          The thing is, google pushed it so hard that it became a red flag for me. Without that I'd probably be using it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @06:04PM (#464645)

      how is it a "troll" to state the truth?

      Wouldn't you consider this a troll post, even though there is a true statement in it:
      "Two plus two equals four and Grishnakh is a whore."

      There are plenty of troll posts on the ghostbusters page and their purpose wasn't to provide valid criticisms of the acting abilities. Trolling is about disruption and negative attention-whoring.

      • (Score: 2) by Arik on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:53PM

        by Arik (4543) on Wednesday February 08 2017, @08:53PM (#464758) Journal
        "There are plenty of troll posts on the ghostbusters page and their purpose wasn't to provide valid criticisms of the acting abilities. Trolling is about disruption and negative attention-whoring."

        That's true enough but trolls can't force this and haven't. At most they've become a convenient excuse for those who do not like free discussion and never have liked free discussion to prevent it from happening.
        --
        If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 08 2017, @07:39PM (#464706)

      the troll posts pointing out that the female actress from Ghostbusters sucks.

      besides the Ghostbusters comment: how is it a "troll" to state the truth?

      Hey, grishdank, YOU SUCK. And that's not a troll, its the TRUTH.