“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).”
While its given reasons for shutting down the message boards were based on traffic, IMDb is not the first website to close its comment sections.
In its announcement, IMDb added that it understood the message boards were an important part of daily users’ visit, which is why the announcement was made weeks in advance.
“Because IMDb’s message boards continue to be utilised by a small but passionate community of IMDb 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,” the statement reads.