Moviepooper turns 200/0

This week marks a major milestone for moviepooper.com--the addition of the 200th pooper! After less than six months online, the site has doubled in size. To celebrate this momentous occasion, we have selected a particularly appropriate film to add to the database today; last year's big-budget Robin Williams flop, Bicentennial Man.

In other news, the number of visitors to moviepooper.com has been steadily increasing. The recent creation of a specific "Movie Spoilers" category at Yahoo! caused traffic to nearly double. Last week, 1,910 unique visitors surfed in, and if this trend continues, we should hit 2,000 this week. So, the synchronicity of reaching both the "200" and the "2,000" mark in the same week has inspired me to pause for a moment's reflection.

Perhaps you'd like to know a little about yourselves. Through the use of those nasty cookies, we've learned a little bit about the folks who surf into Moviepooper:

• 20% of you stop at the Entry page, and never come in to read a pooper.
• Of the people who do come in, the average surfer reads 10 poopers.
• The most popular pooper (in other words, the movie you least want to spend money to know the ending of) is The Matrix. Scream 3 gave it a good challenge when it was first released, but has dropped way off.
• The least popular pooper is Miracle Mile. I can only hope that the reason for this is that everyone who stops by has been planning to see this underrated gem, and doesn't want to ruin their enjoyment. Trust me, rent this film (and continue to avoid the pooper!).
• The Coming Attractions section hasn't turned out to be very popular, so it may vanish in the near future. Please e-mail if you have strong opinions one way or the other.
• 10% of you are staying for more than 20 minutes! I'd like to imagine that you're reading lots of poopers, but chances are that you've just surfed off using an IMDB link, and forgotten that the Moviepooper window is still open in the background. All I know for sure is that you're not using the links to Amazon.com. I got a total of $3.99 in kickbacks from the Associates program in the first three months.
• Every week, somewhere between 10-15 of you visit the site 10 or more times. Of course, this is by IP number, and not necessarily the same person every time. I'd like to thank whoever it was who bookmarked moviepooper.com at the New York Public Library!

What's next for Moviepooper? Well, even with the addition of the Help Wanted section, the stream of movie input has slowed to a trickle, and the backlog of films waiting for inclusion in the database has shrunk to about 20 titles (Help Wanted submissions and new releases will always be posted at the earliest opportunity). Next time, we'll be debuting a column discussing movies that are relevant to this site, and will most likely institute some sort of bulletin board for you to post your thoughts. The column will be called "Spoiler Warning," and like everything else on Moviepooper, any aspect of a movie is fair game.

The topic of the first "Spoiler Warning" will be the movie Sleuth. With multiple plot twists, and what appears to be one more in development when it abruptly ends, this film makes an ideal candidate to test the viability of a semi-regular "pooper" column. If you'd like to watch the movie first and participate in the analysis, those of you in the U.S. will have two opportunities this month on American Movie Classics; June 5th and 20th (check local listings for times).

Thanks for stopping by. See you in seven!

Curt Wiederhoeft, editor
curt@moviepooper.com