The Box Office Mojo issues thread. Brad Brevet is the new editor, the Simanton reign is over.

[maxenricfan]

It shut down for the same reason the forums died down. There's no money in it. I imagine Amazon did an evaluation of how many paying customers would be there ( which unlike people saying they would subscribe rarely turns out that more than a 1000 people would be willing) and there is no way they could recover the cost via advertising. The executives will get the data from deadline or imdb as part of a corporate membership. There is no way an group of 1000 amateurs paying 10 dollars a year would be worth it to run a site like BOM.

 

Today the internet advertising model is dominated by the toothbrush model pioneered by Google. Only those things are viable that a vast section of people use at least once a day. 10,000 people checking BOM daily isn't viable for advertising.

 

If it survives its a part of IMDBPro.

Edited October 11, 2014 by maxenricfan

[grey ghost]

If it is going to go down, we should at least celebrate by talking about what our favorite BOM moments were: 

Mine: 

Finding the site while looking for ROTS' Box Office was life changing. 

Finding the Forums. 

Finding CAYOM. 

The wait for IJ4 to come out 

TDK's BO Run

The Summer of 2009 

Inception's BO Run

 

Honorable Mention

Avatar (I hated being wrong about it, but who couldn't like a film breaking the record). 

 

When they listed MCU as a franchise for the first time.

 

I stared at thing for weeks, I was so happy.

 

and when they added adjusted and worldwide rankings to every franchise. That was the shit.

[DAJK]

If it is going to go down, we should at least celebrate by talking about what our favorite BOM moments were:

Mine:

Finding the site while looking for ROTS' Box Office was life changing.

Finding the Forums.

Finding CAYOM.

The wait for IJ4 to come out

TDK's BO Run

The Summer of 2009

Inception's BO Run

Honorable Mention

Avatar (I hated being wrong about it, but who couldn't like a film breaking the record).

Finding the site looking for Wreck-It-Ralph #s

Skyfall's run

Hobbit AUJ's run (to be honest winter 2012 was magical getting to know the site)

IM3's OW

Frozen's run

I guess I haven't had as much time to fall in love with it as some of you, but after visiting it multiple times every day for almost two years, it's just heartbreaking. Really.

Please please come back BOM!

[Dark Jedi Master 007]

It shut down for the same reason the forums died down. There's no money in it. I imagine Amazon did an evaluation of how many paying customers would be there ( which unlike people saying they would subscribe rarely turns out that more than a 1000 people would be willing) and there is no way they could recover the cost via advertising. The executives will get the data from deadline or imdb as part of a corporate membership. There is no way an group of 1000 amateurs paying 10 dollars a year would be worth it to run a site like BOM.

 

Today the internet advertising model is dominated by the toothbrush model pioneered by Google. Only those things are viable that a vast section of people use at least once a day. 10,000 people checking BOM daily isn't viable for advertising.

Well, we're assuming they are shutting it down, and if they are, this would be the reason. 

And honestly, I'm ok with that. Websites have the right to shut down stuff that doesn't make them money (or that costs them profits). Hell, I'd even understand if they forced people to pay for the data through IMDB pro (although I wouldn't like it). But the issue I have with them is that they haven't told us anything, which I think is unfair. Granted, they might be deliberating what to do, but at least send out a tweet saying "We're working on it." 

 

[iceroll]

IDK how to embed a tweet, so I'm just going to do this: 

 

 

My IMDb rep got off the phone with me immediately after I asked about #BoxOfficeMojo

— Chris Sylvia (@sylvioso) 

Shit that's really worrying.

 

[spizzer]

We could consider a group archiving project.  I know that the Internet Archive has a record of the most recent page, but we could work it all into spreadsheets for superior organization and ease of use.  I loved the site and visited regularly it for ~10 years now , but it was a bit archaic (and part of me hopes that this is the reason that it's down and that it'll be back up with a new look but let's be real here).

[spizzer]

Well, we're assuming they are shutting it down, and if they are, this would be the reason. 

And honestly, I'm ok with that. Websites have the right to shut down stuff that doesn't make them money (or that costs them profits). Hell, I'd even understand if they forced people to pay for the data through IMDB pro (although I wouldn't like it). But the issue I have with them is that they haven't told us anything, which I think is unfair. Granted, they might be deliberating what to do, but at least send out a tweet saying "We're working on it." 

 

 

Yeah, but they already set the precedent for this when the forums went down.  We got virtually no word then either, they just ceased to exist one dreadful morning.

[Dark Jedi Master 007]

Yeah, but they already set the precedent for this when the forums went down.  We got virtually no word then either, they just ceased to exist one dreadful morning.

Which is what makes this even worse. If they shut down BOM the way they shut down the forums, that would mean that they fucked us all twice. 

[Ozymandias]

I've never seen so many people in a Speakeasy thread... you know shit is real when there is this much traffick in the Speakeasy forum.

[AniNate]

We could consider a group archiving project.  I know that the Internet Archive has a record of the most recent page, but we could work it all into spreadsheets for superior organization and ease of use.  I loved the site and visited regularly it for ~10 years now , but it was a bit archaic (and part of me hopes that this is the reason that it's down and that it'll be back up with a new look but let's be real here).

 

Heh, we resurrected the forums, why not the whole site? 

 

Of course, Shawn's gone now and we'd probably need significant clout to get that kind of data.

[Dark Jedi Master 007]

We could consider a group archiving project.  I know that the Internet Archive has a record of the most recent page, but we could work it all into spreadsheets for superior organization and ease of use.  I loved the site and visited regularly it for ~10 years now , but it was a bit archaic (and part of me hopes that this is the reason that it's down and that it'll be back up with a new look but let's be real here).

School is killing me, but I wouldn't mind pitching in (especially when winter break starts, although by then, it might be too late). 

[AniNate]

Which is what makes this even worse. If they shut down BOM the way they shut down the forums, that would mean that they fucked us all twice. 

 

Well, once they cut the forums they didn't really owe us anything.

[JohnnY]

wow is this really happening

 

doesn't boxoffice.com have any intention of archiving all those numbers?

[Dark Jedi Master 007]

Well, once they cut the forums they didn't really owe us anything.

IDK if I agree. But in general, they didn't owe anybody anything, even when the forums were up. However, it's a matter of doing the nice thing because it's the nice thing to do. Especially, when the nice thing costs them nothing. I mean, would it have killed them to put out a tweet today? 

[Mojoguy]

Can someone explain why imdb just crucified BOM?

[spizzer]

Heh, we resurrected the forums, why not the whole site? 

 

Of course, Shawn's gone now and we'd probably need significant clout to get that kind of data.

 

 

School is killing me, but I wouldn't mind pitching in (especially when winter break starts, although by then, it might be too late). 

 

The data up to day is all up on the Internet Archive and it's likely not going anywhere.  All we would need is people on board and organization, it would be minor regular contributions and we could take as long as we want.  

 

The real loss is going to be any data from today onward, everything else is still accessible one way or the other, it could just be better organized.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Spizzer - Manav

[Empire]

IDK if I agree. But in general, they didn't owe anybody anything, even when the forums were up. However, it's a matter of doing the nice thing because it's the nice thing to do. Especially, when the nice thing costs them nothing. I mean, would it have killed them to put out a tweet today?

Yeah, they should have sent out a simple tweet. It would have taken less than a minute to do.

[spizzer]

Grim, I'd link the archive page in the first post.

 

https://web.archive.org/web/*/boxofficemojo.com

[Fancyarcher]

IDK if I agree. But in general, they didn't owe anybody anything, even when the forums were up. However, it's a matter of doing the nice thing because it's the nice thing to do. Especially, when the nice thing costs them nothing. I mean, would it have killed them to put out a tweet today? 

 

Sadly, I doubt anyone who was involved in this was interested in being "nice", as much as I would have liked amazon to explain what was going on.

Edited October 11, 2014 by Pokearcher

[grim22]

The data up to day is all up on the Internet Archive and it's likely not going anywhere.  All we would need is people on board and organization, it would be minor regular contributions and we could take as long as we want.  

 

The real loss is going to be any data from today onward, everything else is still accessible one way or the other.

 

We would need a lot of volunteers, and a logical way to split the task so that no one is overloaded. But most important of all, we need a place to store all the data.