I decided to use the blog format to write about the changes at Spout for several reasons. I may go add to the Spout Feedback group or something similar later, but for right now, the blog feature is my bread and butter on this site anyway, so here it be.
I'm not so sure I'm digging the changes. I've been a Spout member since the Beta site, and the concepts that were particularly appealing at that launch were the building lists, tagging, blogging, and community features. The genius of the site was that it really allowed people to connect about movies, while also allowing each user to express their individual movie-watching personality. It combined some really great features to achieve that end.
All of those features are still there, but I feel like the emphases are changing somewhat with the changes in interface and some of the other things going on, and I'm not sure the changes are keeping true with those original, highly appealing concepts. Evolution is natural, but sometimes, evolution doesn't yield positive, or at least improved, results.
First, there's definitely a plateau on listing. Once you've digested and re-digested films by assigning them to any lists you want, you've pretty much used that feature to its extent. I still list movies in groups every now and again (the most famous example being the Oscars group), but there's only so much listing you can do before listing becomes a stale exercise. Also, with the search engine in place, listing can become a tedious exercise, but I'm not sure how to make that better.
Then, there's tagging. I tag as I watch movies, and sometimes, while I'm searching for movies, I'll tag here and there, but tagging is appealing for a minute, and then that minute fades. Other sites, including amazon and imdb, allow tagging, but I never use this feature on those sites. Again, that may be a personal preference thing.
The blogging feature is nice because of the way you can link an entry to a movie through the write a review feature. That's the feature I like best. I could blog about movies on other blog sites, but since Spout is movie-focused, this is the feature that best serves the site, at least in the current version. After all, Karina by way of the SpoutBlog employs this feature daily and often multiple times a day.
Which brings me to the communities feature. I think I feel as though this is the feature that has suffered the most from the changes at Spout. Each group is only as active as its members, to be sure, but I've noticed that the activity is sputtering to a slow crawl in many groups, and not just the groups I own. With the exception of a couple (perhaps due to its extremely active owners/members), many groups kind of fizzle to the wayside. I'm wondering if it's because Spout, in its changes, has transformed into a website more about offering opinions on behalf of its hosts rather than empowering users to share theirs. People can still share their opinions, but why should they when they can align themselves with "mavens," the chief of which is the SpoutBlog (see mavens interface page).
This is further complicated by the fact that the dashboard has changed to incorporate a "feed" feature, which of course was ganked from facebook, who pioneered the feed concept, allowing users to see what activity their contacts/friends are engaged in. Personally, I found this change annoying, at least because I liked the dashboard concept much better. The dashboard allowed me to see which conversations, that I had participated in or that were attached to groups of which I am a member, were active. It also allowed me to see recent blog posts by my contacts and actually spurred me to pay attention to these features. The feed shows EVERYTHING, and I know there are plans to allow it to be customized, but unless I can drill it down to those basics, I'm not sure I'm interested in any possible changes.
Also complicating matters is the new communities interface. Before, the groups page allowed users to see many different groups: four that were currently active, eight that were recently active, the most active, etc.. That interface, I think, allowed users to see more of what's out there and also exposed new users to different groups that, while not constantly active, might be active enough to make that page. Now, users have to search for genre-specific groups that match their interests and then have to find the activity in their feeds or in their picklists, which have been streamlined also, but do not offer options based on time like they used to do. And those that appear on the communities interface page have been greatly streamlined; they look pretty but don't offer that range of choice, at least at first glance.
I've also noticed that Spout is now hosting ads. That may be necessary to fund the site, but people can also purchase movies from the site. The problem with that - which has actually always been the case - is that the movies are very high priced considering what outlets like Best Buy and Amazon charge. The only (slight) difference is that Spout has a wide-range in availability, particularly of the foreign, arthouse, independent, etc. type movies, moreso than Best Buy and slightly more than Amazon (though Amazon does well for itself and often has marketplace options to go to private sellers for such material). I think this is an awkward business strategy because basic free market economics calls for consumers to respond to lower priced goods if several sellers offer the demanded supply. I've purchased one movie from this site, and that's when I had a coupon, sent to me for being part of the Beta test, to buy a movie at half the price. Which made my selection, I think it was Batman Begins at the time, only slightly cheaper than what would be charged of me at other outlets.
If anyone in the Spout development hub (customer care, site construction and so on) reads my blog, I hope you know that I do love the site and plan to continue using it if for no other reason than I like to flex my writing muscles as it relates to film, and Spout offers me the best way by which to do that. On the other hand, I'm a longtime user that has a basis for comparison for these changes, and that's my opinion in the here and now, as it were.
Thanks for reading, and cheers.