Holy s*** I just saw this today too.
Goodbye from the STARTREK.COM Team
- Thread starter Niemz
- Start date
A big boo hiss to them getting let go of right in the middle of the holiday season. Visited the site a lot and loved 'The Trek Life', it wasn't the funniest strip I've read but it wasn't bad.
It seems reasonable to infer from this that there will be no new Star Trek series added to the site in the future.
Moving right along.
Moving right along.
Yeah, I like it. Though I preferred it when it was weekly.
They may be firing the development team, but this only really just means there will be no additional development on the site - at least not for a while. This doesn't mean that the site itself is being shut down entirely (unless Paramount specifically mentioned that the site is to be turned off along with the laying-off of the developers). They probably have everything caught up with all the series by now with regards to reference materials. There's nothing new under the sun with the exception of the new movie. I suppose they could be just relegated to making announcements of new novels and comic books, but they don't need a whole team of multiple people to do that. So, it's probably going to remain running, but with little-to-no substantive updates until the movie makes it big or they decide to start up another series. That's my take on it anyway.
From a business perspective I totally see why they're doing this.
From a keeping-your-fan-base-happy perspective, there is no sense to be made here.
The paradox: Keeping your fan base happy is a good BUSINESS decision! How do you do what's good for business and keep your customers happy? These things frequently collide.
A property like Star Trek, I would think that a better decision would have been to scale back the site, only keep it as updated as most other similar sites (that is to say not really updated at all, but with minor small announcements for new movies maybe the odd DVD release.) This way the fans can keep the site as a resource it appears to have only changed a little (kept them somewhat happy) and they can scale back the money they are pouring into it and place the resources on other projects.
But alas, I am not running CBS Interactive.
From a keeping-your-fan-base-happy perspective, there is no sense to be made here.
The paradox: Keeping your fan base happy is a good BUSINESS decision! How do you do what's good for business and keep your customers happy? These things frequently collide.
A property like Star Trek, I would think that a better decision would have been to scale back the site, only keep it as updated as most other similar sites (that is to say not really updated at all, but with minor small announcements for new movies maybe the odd DVD release.) This way the fans can keep the site as a resource it appears to have only changed a little (kept them somewhat happy) and they can scale back the money they are pouring into it and place the resources on other projects.
But alas, I am not running CBS Interactive.
Sent in my email. With any luck, the site itself will remain active, even if there is nobody to update it. Makes no sense to kill it entirely. Maintaining a domain registration is chump-change to them, and they probably own all their own servers and bandwidth.
Odd that this occurring right before the movie. I would have expected it 6 months after ENT was over...but now?
But yeah - I can't imagine them shutting it down completely. It might end up being just a crappy advert though - something that is easy to maintain.
But yeah - I can't imagine them shutting it down completely. It might end up being just a crappy advert though - something that is easy to maintain.
That was the only thing I went to the site for...
They posted this on the official site today
I have to say that I'm a bit disturbed by the slash-and-burn mass purges associated with the new movie (not just StarTrek.com). I understand Abrams and company wanting to bring in fresh talent, but it's really not a good idea to overlook all the other experienced people who might have something to offer.
Given this and the rather lackluster cast and crew (writers, especially) associated with the new film, I am not optimistic at all. I think the Paramount picture of 2008 for which I will be waiting will be Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Given this and the rather lackluster cast and crew (writers, especially) associated with the new film, I am not optimistic at all. I think the Paramount picture of 2008 for which I will be waiting will be Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Translation: We don't want to pay professionals to maintain and contribute content to the site any longer, so we're hoping that fans will now do it for free.
This is the big thing these days - "user-generated content." Which basically means the organizations that own these sites are trying to do them on the cheap without having to employ professionals.
You see it all the time on so-called "news" sites that get all of their content from unpaid "news bloggers." And then they act shocked when it turns out their site is full of libelous, wildly innacuracate news and outright plagerism.
Despite being disturbed at the events going on at StarTrek.com, I very much doubt that JJ Abrams had anything to do with it. Typically these sites are under the purview of the studio marketing department, not the movie directors.
It's too bad. Though, I rarely actually visit the site anymore, it's still nice to have for a quick reference for some of those oddball alien spellings of names, places, etc.
