IMDb stopt met discussieplatformen vanwege negativiteit

IMDb, Internet Movie Database, is al jarenlang een van de grootste filmsites ter wereld. Een van de belangrijkste onderdelen voor de site zijn de message boards, een plek waar mensen met elkaar in discussie kunnen over de films. Nu heeft de site aangekondigd compleet te gaan stoppen met hun discussieplatform. In een verklaring laat de site weten dat het platform niet langer een positieve en bruikbare beleving heeft. Op 20 februari stopt IMDb niet alleen de message boards, maar ook met de mogelijkheid dat gebruikers onderling berichtjes naar elkaar kunnen versturen. Lees de complete verklaring:

“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, 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. The 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 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 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.”

Op de aankondiging wordt wisselend gereageerd. Er wordt door de gebruikers aangegeven dat er afgelopen jaar minder traffic is en dat er veel meer “trollen” zijn. Zo leveren ze geen opbouwend commentaar, maar richten ze zich veel meer op spelfoutjes, de mening van een andere gebruiker of  moedwillig de boel te verzieken.