For years, IMDB has been a vital place for pop culture fans to turn to if they wondered who played, voiced or directed various roles. But soon, a long-standing feature of the site will be retired.
IMDB announced in a statement Friday the site will disable its message boards Feb. 20. In its post, IMDB said the age of the forums played a role in its decision.
“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,” IMDB wrote. “The decision to retire a long-standing feature was made only after careful consideration and was based on data and traffic.”
For users, the forum shutdown will roll out in a staggered process. Friday’s early announcement is intended to give users two weeks to archive content they want to save and reach out to other users they want to keep in touch with, because direct messages will also be shuttered on the site. IMDB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on if the forums will be archived or removed entirely from the site.
With IMDB’s move to shut down its forums, the site falls in line with larger trends on where user conversations now happen. As The Verge noted, IMDB originally started in the early ‘90s, when internet forums were the primary way for users to meet up and talk. Along with its general forum section, IMDB also hosted subforums on individual pages dedicated to actors, actresses, movies and other figures. On the bottom of any given page, you could find users talking about the special edition of Star Wars: Episode IV or wishing German director Werner Herzog a happy birthday.
But as IMDB’s statement pointed out, most of its user discussion has migrated to platforms like Twitter and Facebook. As more sites have stepped away from traditional forums due to concerns like age and the need for moderation, IMDB’s shutdown of its forums takes out a distinctive part of the last generation of websites.
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