Midweek Update – exciting things are happening….

Greetings all!  Wanted to keep you abreast of some of the changes that will be happening in the not too distant future…

I mentioned last week on Subject:CINEMA that we were going to be doing some minor redesigns of the site over the next two weeks. You should start to notice them in the next day or two. First off, I have added a "Live Search" search box to the right sidebar, but it doesn’t appear to be operating properly, so we’ll be working on that over the next couple of days.

Also, after a few discussions with people, we have elected to concentrate our social networking efforts in four places – we WILL be keeping the site on Spout.Com, and I have been working on greatly expanding our presence on Facebook, where a number of our regular listeners congregate. This area will consist of a lot of movie-oriented plug-ins and capsule reviews of dozens of films i’ve seen. Kim is also thinking of launching a Facebook page of her own, with my encouragement; we’ll have more on that as it develops. Kim is also planning to relaunch Platinum Roses’ Garden soon…

In addition to Spout and Facebook, which are already growing, and the already large MySpace site (all of which you should all join if you haven’t already…), we will be connecting and making our newest friends’ network site active this weekend. Friends of Landmark (http://friends.landmarktheatres.com) is a brand-new social site, connecting fans of the Landmark Cinema chain. We love our local Landmark theater, the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge, and a good number of great films end up in Landmark’s houses (this great, unknown little thing called "Wristcutters: A Love Story" and another recent Diamond, "Fierce People", among the many we’ve seen there), so we’ve decided to open a fan site over there. The idea is that you join the Landmark site, then join various people’s pages. I hope you’ll check it out when it debuts in the next couple of days – there will be a "Landmark" button of some sort on the sidebar. The four sites above will be grouped together in some way.

Now, these changes will NOT affect the "Friends Network" – these are sites that we will continue to have a relationship with, and if you link up there (Netflix, Blogshares, Beanywood, etc) we will still be active there, but the ones that will be very active for social networking will be MySpace, Spout, Facebook, and Friends Of Landmark. Hope that’s not too confusing for you…it was confusing to write it, that’s for sure…

The only social networking site we are dropping completely is Friendster…because they have proven to be "less than friendster-ly" in dealing with me concerning problems with our site over there. This membership will disappear this weekend for good, unless they can answer about a dozen questions plausibly…something that they have yet to do…and they’ve been extremely RUDE in dealing with me as well…I’ve often thought over the past couple of months that they should add the words "Screw Your" to the term "Customer Service" on their site…

Also this weekend, probably on Sunday when the next Subject:CINEMA premieres, I HOPE (keep your fingers crossed, heh heh heh) to be debuting a new area of the site, tenatively called "The Listzone". This is going to encompass a number of different things we’re working on that are more or less permanent fixtures on the site – the Personal Pantheon lists, the Rising Stars list, the top 20 songs lists, the Scenes That Sizzle lists, etc.  PLus, we will be making a number of permanent connections sites as part of the ListZone. All the links presently on the "Connections" list in the sidebar will be moving there except to those sites that we run or that are connected to the PNR Network, and we’ll be introducing a number of "portals" to this area, dealing with both sales (magazine subs and the like) as well as info (Newspaper Movie sites, movie magazine sites, etc). Some of these are being incorporated into the PNR Toolbar, which will also debut (FINALLY!) soon.

Anyway, stay tuned on Sunday for more info on this week’s Subject:CINEMA!  And keep checking the site for more news!