Chris at MMM has the lowdown on New Line's official website for Snakes on a Plane, which is now live.As Chris and many other bloggers have said all along, the best thing New Line can do to promote SoaP is not get in the way of what the online community has and is creating to market this movie.
With that being the criteria, Chris thinks the website has mixed results:
One of the two sections on the site right now is called "Fan Site of the Week" and links to a number of blogs and sites devoted to the movie. Good move, very community friendly. Less so is the second, called "Snakes Kit." It's where you can download wallpapers and other online swag for the movie. Pretty standard, right? But the studio seems to lose it by requiring - REQUIRING - people to register on the site in order to download the goods.
No studio I have seen in more than two years requires people to register to download stuff from the official site. You almost always have the option to register, but it's usually just to receive updates or other news. Not for access to basic functionality. That's a horrible, horrible move that I just can't understand.
And then Chris closes with this: "If someone from New Line would like to contact me about this I'd love to talk about it more with them. It would be interesting to hear the rational for this move as it completely escapes me."
My advice? Someone at New Line would be wise to shoot Chris an email.
3 comments:
I really don't get it. Why would you make such a blatatnly anti-openness move for a movie that is going to live or die based on the community? That's wrong-headed thinking. I wonder how many people such as myself New Line is going to discourage from downloading things because they don't want to go through the hassle of registration.
Exactly, I have serious ADD when it comes to being asked to stop and register, log-in, etc for anything like that. I'll just leave.
But again, you're asking the questions other fans of the movie are wondering as well, so New Line would be well-served to address yours.
I don't register simply because I don't want them having all my info. Plus I don't want to take the time to remember YET ANOTHER password.
Idiot move, and good on Chris for calling them on it.
Post a Comment