Its been a few months since IMDb shut down their forums and I'm still trying to figure out where everyone went. Started googling movie forums today and this one came up. Have any other fellow ex-IMDbers migrated here?

I've been spending time on Reddit (/movies, /flicks) and MovieChat.org but there's only a few hundred/thousand users on those sites, whereas IMDb had millions. Where did everyone go?

I was on IMDb for many years, but I migrated here in 2008-2010. It was just much easier to follow conversations about popular movies (and avoid trolls/spam) here than it was on IMDb.

I miss the IMDb boards more than I thought I would though. Even though I would rarely post in the last 5-10 years, they were a great resource for finding out what people are saying about a particular movie or TV show, especially older shows or ones that aren't quite mainstream. I don't even know where to go for that kind of information now.

Anyway, welcome aboard, don't let the savages scare you.

This. Exactly.

Well the moviechat site that I mentioned saved all the old posts from IMDb, so I can search for any obscure movie and find posts from several years ago. No idea how they did that but pretty neat.

However, I'm still trying to figure out where the millions of IMDb users went because moviechat has only a few thousand, Reddit is so scattered across different subreddits it's hard to tell, and there don't seem to be any other big sites that captured former IMDb users (I thought Rotten Tomatoes would, but doesn't look like it). Maybe most of the former IMDb users just quit altogether?

IMDb, had millions of registered users or active users? I think the number of active users was probably quite a bit less than that. Most people who have been on the internet for any length of time have an IMDb account, because if you're looking for information on a particular movie and/or want to ask a particular question that fans of a movie/show might know about, that was the easiest way to do it.

I'd bet that there's at least a million IMDb registered users who have only ever posted a handful of times, and still more who (like me) have accounts and used to be active, but rarely used the forums anymore.

I think the majority of registered IMDb users didn't seek out new homes when IMDb went away because they didn't think of IMDb as home to begin with.

Thanks. This is helpful.

I was probably one of the million registered but was never more than a lurker. I do enjoy checking out some of the user reviews on IMDB and the message boards had some interesting bits of information. I just never got into the community like probably 900,000 of those million.

I've been a member here for 20 years. Wouldn't have stuck around if it wasn't good. However I think all the boards have suffered from the plethora of social media. We don't have nearly the participation we did a decade ago.

Bring moar of your friends. This site needs an injection of fresh blood. Send more paramedics.

Yeah I was a lucker for the most part. I LOVED how people would talk about scenes and discuss endings. You just really can't get that anywhere. Or about a movie that was talked about being made and never did.

I was always turned off by IMDB boards. Kind of like trying to have a conversation on Youtube. It goes from 'hey that movie was pretty good' to some racist or political shit.

Wait a second ... Are you telling me "internet millions" don't equate to actual millions of people?! I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you! Shocked!

Perhaps they were all at Trump's inauguration.

Memories! Comingsoon.net back in the late 90's. So much good coverage on stalled projects back then. At least I think it was comingsoon.net. Was there another one? They would label (usually the stuff I wanted to see most) in "Development Hell". And there was always good leaky insider info. That's how I remember it anyways.

I talk about that a lot lately (not on here). They're "fake eyeballs". Bullshit traffic. It's why an ecommerce website can get a million hits and not sell a single product. It's all fake Twitter accounts, fake traffic. It's hard to say how many legitimate hits you get anymore. Even this website is probably being propped up as SEO for some more successful site.

Even years ago we had numbers that seemed huge considering there were only a few hundred that actually posted anything. I think most people registered to avoid the ads.

I used to be an IMDb member. I really miss it.

Yeah, I miss the hell out of it. Don't know why they closed it.

I suspect they closed it because they've been arse-creeping Hollywood pretty baldly for the past couple of years, and Hollywood, being full of sensitive neurotic types, probably said they'd play along if IMDB got rid of all the people who said nasty things about them or their movies. So IMDb just got rid of everybody.

And now we get endless superficial, ego-stroking "No Small Parts" blowjob videos and "IMDB at the (insert awards ceremony or film festival here)" where you can see the same thing only with the stars getting licked in person. I'm pretty sure the long-term goal will be "Original Programming" because there's just not enough of that around these days.

Meanwhile, the people who helped MAKE the site what it is -- movie and TV lovers and trolls alike -- get the big heave. Of course, you can still write reviews, seemingly the less literate the better, and even better (it seems) if you write fake reviews -- or hire companies that do the same -- to boost the rankings of your own film. The sheer number of 8- to 10-star no-budget, regional, homemade movies is absolutely galling. And yet IMDb does nothing about that, even after it results in reactionary 1-star reviews just to even out the score. What a system!

I must admit, though, that the IMDb app is the one I use the most on my devices, mainly to rate (not review) every movie I watch right after I'm done, and then scroll through the relevant filmographies to see if anything else might be worth seeing. I also download my "ratings" list every few months just in case they decide to alter or drop that feature, too, someday. Despite it's still impressive track record for errors, the site's overall content can't be bettered at this point in time. The app is well-designed and very intuitive, and great for very basic referencing while you're watching a show. The "Critics Reviews" button is much more prevalent than it is on the desktop site, so I always use that to link out to better-written critiques than can be found on IMDb itself, particularly Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and other mainstream organs, but also to sites like DVD Talk (although a lot of the "Critic" links lead to 404 pages for long-deceased "review blogs." 'Memba those?). Beyond that and looking up filmographies, the "Forums" button was also handy for a quick scroll through the discussions about any given film I'd just watched. I rarely participated, but despite the vitriol (hey, it exists!) those forums were goldmines of additional links and background information for which the IMDb itself offered no home. And I can't count the number of filmmakers and performers who would participate in forums related to their work. Mind you, I'm sure the trolling scared as many off as joined, but many creatives were met with graciousness and serious, often highly-informed discussion about their work. But IMDb would rather foreground clip videos and schmooze at award ceremonies, just like every other empty-headed "entertainment news" show on TV and the web, because there's just not enough of that around these days, either. I mean, how else are we to find out how awesome it was for Actor A to perform with Actress B and the absolute best crew they've ever worked with?! And I don't know about you, but my day's not complete unless I know which celebrities Col Needham brown-nosed today!

In some ways, though, I can sort of understand the shuttering of the forums. It was probably easier than policing them, which would've cost untold man hours. And the whole concept of the discussion forum has felt long-in-the-tooth for ages now in light of social media, and I'm sure the participation numbers at just about any forum you'd care to name (movie-related or otherwise) increasingly reflect that.

If IMDb itself ever goes defunct, I will be devastated, as it's by far the most extensive film resource around. I don't think I ever used the forum.

I first used imdb in 1996 and I haven't been there since they closed the forum.

There's no longer anything there that can't be found elsewhere.

Thats kind of a strange logic. It can be found elsewhere, but it can also be found on IMDB, no? You make it sound as if IMDB is a pay service that you put up with because of the messageboards, but now that they're gone you have no reason to pay for the site.

Same here. What's there now isn't worth my time to read since it's all just pro-positive stuff gushing about the movies and shows.

The forums had insight and facts from many different people/angles and I could get lost in them for hours just reading them.

Same here. I use it constantly as a data source, but I've never used their forums.

Okay I'll be more specific. I used to use IMDb to find showtimes, then Fandango started doing it better and IMDb never improved.

I used to read the lists of trivia and goofs, but then Wikipedia came along where writers voluntarily took those bullet point lists and transformed them into encyclopedic prose essays that were better to read. Furthermore Wikipedia allowed greater scrutiny and weeded out apocryphal stories whereas IMDb had almost no oversight and all kinds of incorrect stuff was posted there. Complete filmographies for everyone are also on Wikipedia now.

They used to have an entertainment news summary that was excellent, now it's just links to click bait articles.

I agree that a LOT of IMDb trivia and goofs are of no value (such as pointing out that Actor 1 and Actor 2 previously worked together umpteen times, or assuming [frustratingly] that any coincidental similarity between two films is automatically an homage), but the majority of legitimate trivia has not migrated to Wikipedia at all, let alone reformatted into interesting articles.


That's only true if you're looking up fairly high-profile people. The vast majority of people who work in the industries -- cast AND crew alike, veterans, newcomers and especially people way down the food chain that are still not without interesting careers -- are not well represented at Wikipedia at all, if at all. IMDb may indeed have it's share of errors, but the volume of information it contains is unrivaled. But any user, and in particular any researcher, worth their salt, should already know not to use it as a sole resource.

I never would've trusted IMDb for something like showtimes, though. Between Fandango and the cinema chains themselves (in the U.S.) and the cinema chains (in Canada, and presumably elsewhere), there was never any need to trust a trivial database for such information.


This bit is reasonably accurate, but then the entertainment sites they link out to -- well, the good ones, rather than the regurgitators -- were bookmarked on my devices years ago, or the respective apps downloaded.

I personally have little need to drill down into obscure cast and crew.

From 2000-2005 approximately the "Showtimes" feature was excellent and better than most things out there.