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For which they scold the new "Kinopoisk" and whether there is anything good in it

On the evening of October 8, Yandex restarted the encyclopedia of the films “Kinopoisk”: the site’s design, interface and the main idea have radically changed. Now this is an aggregator of online cinemas that allows you to find, buy and view a legal copy of the film in one place.

Changes in the structure and philosophy of the KinoPoisk turned out to be too strong and disappointed the fans of the service, which resulted in mass discontent, resentment and calls to return the old, like Kinopoisk. Medusa analyzed the main claims to the new version of the service and tried to find its strengths.

What has changed?

Accents. If earlier on the main page of KinoPoisk, cinema news was collected - from prime minister and fresh trailers to fees at the box office and editorial notes - now this is a place where the user can find as quickly as possible, which film to watch. This was the attention of the service representatives at the presentation on October 8: the registered users have a selection of films on the main page will be personalized, that is, it will depend on its tastes.

This is what the first screen of the main page looked before:

And now how:

Cinema news remained, but moved to the social network "KinoPoisk", and on the main page are represented by a short ardent in an inconspicuous place. Changing accents is also visible on the remaining pages of the site. For example, films cards previously represented a detailed sum of facts, from the release date and the main characters to interesting facts and errors:

Now, the main place is occupied by the picture, trailer, brief information and reviews. Data about the film did not disappear, but in order to see them, you need to make several additional clicks.

The design of the site has also changed dramatically, which had not changed before 12 years before. Yandex redrawn Kinopoisk as part of its unified visual style ( the Market , News , Music and other services of the company also look like the same) and modern trends - large pictures, a lot of “air” and so on.

Why do they hate the new Kinopoisk?

For everything. The restart itself passed, to put it mildly, not smoothly: the site was slowly loaded and often showed the user an error message even after almost a day after the restart.

Together with the update of Kinopoisk, he forcibly transferred users to profiles in Yandex (common between different services of the company), which in itself caused the indignation of some fans of the service. Those who did not see their assessments, bookmarks and lists on the new site were even more angry. This happened either due to the fact that users did not see the proposal to connect the account at Kinopoisk, or due to technical problems when combining profiles.

Design to fans of the old "KinoPoisk" also did not appeal. They are used to a higher concentration of text per square centimeter of the screen. Now, the text blocks are rarefied, primarily thanks to the large pictures that everywhere accompanying films and TV shows. In fairness, it is worth saying that experienced designers were cool to the new external appearance of the site - if only because KinoPoisk became “faceless” after unification with other Yandex products.

Absolutely advanced users (we suspect that there were very few of them among the multimillion -dollar audience of the KinoPoisk) complain about cutting functionality: before you could watch detailed statistics and lists according to many parameters, and if desired, sort these lists as you like. In the new version of the site, these functions were either completely abolished or simplified to the most obvious scenarios.

Finally, they often say that the new Kinopoisk has lost his soul. And with this claim, Yandex will have the most difficult thing.

Why can I love KinoPoisk?

Judging by the Newkinopoisk.ru website, collecting reviews about the new Kinopoisk, praise it much less often than scolded. Moreover, approving comments often sound from people who used the site occasionally.

The author of this material belongs to such people, so he will try to find good in what happened to the KinoPoisk. The head of the service, Olga Mansurova, speaking of the restart, mentioned the problem familiar to many: often a person spends a lot of time on finding a suitable film. Even more than actually to view the found. And it is precisely such people that will now try to help KinoPoisk.

So far, to fully test the script “Tell me a good film for the evening” due to technical difficulties, it is not easy. But if in the end, Kinopoisk really learn to advise a movie or a series that will want to sit right now, this will retain a huge number of human arms and halogolograms.

A simplified and lightweight interface, hated by fans of the old KinoPoisk, will almost certainly like those who come to the site from time to time, and those who used to be afraid of the abundance of information.

Yandex did not improve KinoPoisk, but took the database and built on its basis a new service - instead of the encyclopedia about the cinema and the Russian analogue of IMDB, is now a place where you can get a recommendation, which movie to watch (and in the future - immediately watch it).

I hate the new Kinopoisk. How to live on?

Wait. Most likely, in the next few weeks, Yandex will not only defeat the main technical problems, because of which the Kinopoisk is very difficult to use, but will also take a few steps towards users. It is unlikely that the company will roll back the design, but it may well return part of the expanded functions.

If you wish, you can take part in one of the protest actions that were arranged by dissatisfied users: to sign a petition on Change.org or to highly rated the greenfid “ Green Elephant ” (he had already raised the rating to 8.2, which helped him get into the top 2550 of the best films-but at the time of writing the film was no longer in the rating of the film).

If you can’t even look at the new Kinopoisk, you will have to look for alternative services. The first thing that comes to mind is IMDB , the largest international movie database. But for normal work with the site you need to know English. Russian-speaking users may be suitable for Afisha@mail.ru (it has just appeared in it of their own recommendations) or “ kg portal ”, more familiar by the name “Kino-Gene.com”.

Geektimes already sound calls to pump data from the KinoPoisk and “pull” the design of the old version of the site on them. It is possible that some enthusiast really implements such a project.

Sultan Suleimanov

Riga