![]() Moving major content to a completely different website, IMDb Pro, breaks that integrated and unified experience. Our original team’s site design philosophy was always: every chart should be accessible within two or three clicks. HOWEVER - and this is a big however - what they chose to put behind the IMDb Pro paywall makes little sense to me, and breaks a huge value Mojo once had, editorially speaking: integrated data. An ad-free Mojo makes is speedier to navigate and gives far more space Now appears that Mojo is primary one big advertisement for IMDb Pro and itsĬhief value to IMDb, as there are no ads on the new version of the site. In-house ads for IMDb Pro and Amazon Studios related movies. Seriously attempted the ad-revenue angle on Mojo, as most of its ads were Since the acquisition, it appeared IMDb never (I suspect this was done to secure an old, outdated system, while they worked on a complete rewrite of the website.)īack to the point: A paywall was always in Mojo’s DNA, and, if I recallĬorrectly, accounted for up to 20% of its revenue when we sold in 2008 - the It also abandoned showtimes data and redirected users to IMDb for that information, which broke the screen counts data on the weekend charts. When IMDb removed user accounts (in 2009-2010?), it made many of these Premier Pass features free, while removed others that required using an account (such as customized weekend charts, vs. Top 50 or 100 movies for yearly box office), which required a Premier Pass to Many charts only displayed partial data (e.g., Site-wide inflation adjust functionality, sorting charts, additionalĭaily/weeknd charts (e.g., studio estimates vs. Newer Mojo fans probably forget (or weren’t old enough to even remember) that the previous version of Mojo also had a paywall, called “Premier Pass.”įeatures were “hidden” behind this paywall, including an ad-free experience, On Twitter, many are complaining that certain features are behind a paywall and only accessible through IMDb Pro. On this front, the new redesign is a welcome improvement. The lack of a mobile friendly site was a major usability problem too. In short: a complete revamp of the backend technology was badly needed, and integrating it with the IMDb platform, at least on the backend, would save on double-entry of basic movie data. ![]() Anyone using the site regularly complainedĪbout a frequent message that the site was “being updated” and to “check back ![]() Site had become clunky, with missing features and abandoned content (such as That means some of that code was SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD, including an antiquated single-user back end system written in FileMaker Pro (version 5 or 6). Much of the code base that was running up until the just-released IMDb Pro refresh was written between 20 (IMDb didn’t do many updates after the acquisition, other than remove features). When I teamed with Brandon Gray and we formed Mojo as a company in 2002, I took on the task of putting all the box office data into a database (previously it had been updated in Microsoft’s Front Page, believe it or not). So here is my take, and some context, about the resign. This indicates that whatever is missing, was intentionally not prioritized, which sheds some light on their approach - and leaves some hope that they now have a reliable platform with which to innovate new charts and content. by release date, seasonal and holiday grosses, etc.), and even some added useful information (such as noting holiday names on the chart index pages ). It’s actually amazing how much data did make into the new version (calendar grosses vs. I do hope IMDb takes some of this feedback seriously, not because of the “design” but because of what it says about their editorial focus and understanding of box office. The reaction on Twitter and the Hollywood press is resoundingly negative. Several features have been moved behind the IMDb Pro paywall, including some genre and franchise movie charts, while some features disappeared altogether including: weekly theater counts, calendar views of box office on movie pages, adjusting any domestic box office chart for ticket price inflation, among others. Eleven years after Brandon Gray and I sold Box Office Mojo to Amazon/IMDb in 2008, they finally released a complete revamp of the site, updating the design and backend so that it appears to be fully integrated with the IMDb database.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |