Flixster was an American social-networking movie website for discovering new movies, learning about movies, and meeting others with similar tastes in movies. It is currently owned by Fandango Media . The formerly independent site, allowed users to view movie trailers as well as learn about new and upcoming movies at the box office. It was originally based in San Francisco and was founded by Joe Greenstein and Saran Chari on January 20, 2006. It was also the former parent company of Rotten Tomatoes from January 2010 to February 17, 2016. On February 17, 2016, Flixster, including Rotten Tomatoes, was acquired by Fandango.
62-472: In February 2016, Fandango acquired Flixster and began migrating Flixster Video users to its competing service called FandangoNow then closing the Flixster Video service. On August 28, 2017, Flixster shut down its digital redemption and streaming video service and directed customers to use Vudu . On December 22, 2017, the company sent an email to customers saying that it would cease all operations in
124-410: A "serious competitor" of Fandango's. In July 2009, it was revealed that Fandango and other websites, including buy.com and Orbitz , were linked with controversial Web loyalty programs, also known as post-transaction marketers . Fandango reportedly gave the third party access to Fandango customers' credit cards. In December 2013, Fandango launched a trademark dispute when WWE tried to trademark
186-440: A blog post: "Over the past decade, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and Google+ have taken off, with communities springing up in every corner of the world. Because the growth of these communities has outpaced Orkut's growth, we've decided to bid Orkut farewell." Orkut was the result of a 20 percent project in which Google workers got to spend a fifth of their time on ideas not necessarily related to their job responsibilities. However,
248-435: A community on Orkut called 'We Hate India', which initially carried a picture of an Indian flag being burned and some anti-India content. The High Court order was issued in response to a public-interest petition filed by an Aurangabad advocate. Google had six weeks to respond. Even before the petition was filed, many Orkut users had noticed this community and were mailing or otherwise messaging their contacts on Orkut to report
310-664: A guestbook where visitors could leave comments visible on the user's page. This link used to lure visitors with a message in Portuguese, falsely claiming to offer additional photos. The message text that carried an infection link varied from case to case. In addition to stealing personal information, the malware could also enable a remote user to control the PC and make it part of a botnet , a network of infected PCs. The initial executable file (Minhasfotos.exe) created two additional files when activated, winlogon_.jpg and wzip32.exe (located in
372-534: A list of about twenty-four Brazilian nationals, believed to be using Orkut to sell drugs and to be involved in child pornography. The judge ordered Google to pay $ 23,000 per day in fines until the information is turned over to the Brazilian government. According to the Brazilian government, the information would also be used to identify individuals who are spreading child pornography and hate speech . As of September 27, 2006 Google has stated that it will not release
434-632: A new entertainment website called " Fancast.com ", set to launch the summer of 2007. In June 2008, the domain Movies.com was acquired from Disney. In March 2012, Fandango announced a partnership with Yahoo! Movies, making Fandango the official online and mobile ticketer for registered users of the Yahoo! service. That October, Paul Yanover was named President of Fandango. Fandango made its first international acquisition in September 2015 when it bought
496-504: A petition demanding a ban on social networking site, Orkut, for hosting an anti- Shivaji Web community. In 2007, the Pune rural police cracked a rave party filled with narcotics . The accused have been charged under anti-narcotic laws, the (Indian) Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropics Substances Act, 1985 (NDPS). Besides the NDPS, according to some media reports, the police were deliberating on
558-438: A potential visitor was on a person's "Ignore List" (this feature was eventually changed so that users could choose between showing their profile to all networks or specified ones). Each member was also able to customize their profile preferences and restrict information that appears on their profile from their friends and/or others. Another feature was that any member can add any other member on Orkut to his/her "Crush List". When
620-547: A renewed ban on the site, which remained in effect despite Google's promise to negotiate the ban with the UAE. Saudi Arabia is another country that had blocked access to Orkut, while Bahrain's Information Ministry was also under pressure to follow suit. On June 19, 2006, FaceTime Security Labs' security researchers Christopher Boyd and Wayne Porter discovered a worm, dubbed MW.Orc. The worm steals users' banking details, usernames and passwords by propagating through Orkut. The attack
682-487: A session remains alive even after a user logs out. His experiment confirmed that the sessions remain alive for 14 days after the user has logged out. It implies that a hijacked session could be used for 14 days by the hijacker because logging out did not kill the session. On December 19, 2007, a worm written in Javascript started to cause havoc. Created by a Brazilian user called "Rodrigo Lacerda", it automatically made
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#1732786956241744-437: A small set of default themes. Photo tagging also was available. On October 27, 2009, Orkut released their 2nd redesigned version. It was available to only a few users at first. These users were able to send invites to their Orkut friends to join this new version. The new version used Google Web Toolkit (GWT), thus making extensive use of AJAX in the user interface. However, users of the new version could still switch back to
806-436: A story and podcast calling Fandango's metrics on user ratings into question. The investigation noted that the site's method for calculating ratings made it rare for a movie to ever receive an overall rating below three stars. The problem seemingly extended from Fandango's habit of rounding ratings up to the nearest half. Fandango, in response, noted that this was a glitch it was working to repair. Nevertheless, Gizmodo cited
868-696: A streaming digital video store and streaming service, as well as Rotten Tomatoes , which provides television and streaming media information. In 2000, Cline, with Art Levitt, founded Fandango. In 2003, Fandango secured $ 15 million in funding from venture capitalists Technology Crossover Ventures. Fandango was privately held. Then-owners included exhibition chains (Loews Cineplex Entertainment, Regal Cinemas, Carmike Cinemas, Cinemark Theatres, General Cinema Theatres, Edwards Theatres and Century Theatres ) and venture capital firms ( Accretive Technology Partners and General Atlantic Partners ). On April 11, 2007, Comcast acquired Fandango, with plans to integrate it into
930-475: A user logged in, they saw the people in their friends list in the order of their login to the site, the first person being the latest one to do so. Orkut's competitors were other social networking sites including Myspace and Facebook . The site Ning was a more direct competitor, as it allowed for the creation of social networks similar to Orkut's "communities". An Orkut user was also able to add videos to their profile from either YouTube or Google Video with
992-461: A user of the old version to someone using the New Orkut go completely unnoticed by its recipient (the New Orkut does not inform the user of these lost messages, that can only be read if they switch back to the old version). As with any online social networking community, a number of fake and cloned profiles existed on Orkut. Due to the large number of users and the deactivation of the jail system,
1054-532: Is based on the presence of 9 identical bugs in Orkut that also existed in InCircles. On August 25, 2007, Orkut announced a redesign and the new UI contained round corners and soft colors, including small logotype at upper left corner. By August 30, 2007, most users on Orkut could see changes on their profile pages as per the new redesign. On August 31, 2007, Orkut announced its new features including improvements to
1116-551: The Loews Cineplex Entertainment chain, due to contractual obligations in place prior to the 2005 merger of the two movie chains. Loews had previously attempted to break the contract in 2002 under pressure of bankruptcy and from (then) AOL Moviefone and its partner, Loews' Cineplex subsidiary; Fandango successfully sued both Loews and Moviefone and retained Loews' business. As of February 8, 2012, Fandango began providing ticketing for all AMC Theatres in
1178-485: The System32 Folder). When the user clicked the "My Computer" icon, a mail was sent containing their personal data. In addition, they might be added to an XDCC Botnet (used for file sharing), and the infection link might be sent to other users that they knew in the Orkut network. The infection could be spread manually, but also had the ability to send "back dated" infection links to people in the " friends list" of
1240-784: The United Artists and Hoyts theater chains, was the second largest movie-theater chain in the U.S. Regal and its partners founded Fandango partly to prevent the older MovieTickets.com from establishing a monopoly on phone and online ticketing services. (MovieTickets.com was publicly owned and traded under the stock symbol HOLL. ) The company's advertising agency reportedly chose the name "Fandango" because it sounded "fun, kinetic and smart", and "easily pronounce[d] and remember[ed]--even though it really has nothing to do with movies." Prior to 2012, Fandango did not provide online ticketing for many AMC Theatres . However, it provided online ticketing for AMC Theatres that were originally part of
1302-612: The Brazilian ticketing company Ingresso, which provides ticketing to a variety of Brazilian entertainment events, including the biannual Rock in Rio festival. On January 29, 2016, Fandango announced its acquisition of M-GO, a joint venture between Technicolor SA and DreamWorks Animation (NBCUniversal acquired the latter company three months later), which it would later rebrand as "FandangoNOW". In February 2016, Fandango announced its acquisition of Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes from Time Warner 's Warner Bros. Entertainment . As part of
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#17327869562411364-399: The Orkut users. A week later, on June 29, 2007 Susam Pal published another security advisory which described how the Orkut authentication issue could be exploited to hijack Google and Gmail sessions and misuse the compromised account of a legitimate user under certain conditions... Joseph Hick performed an experiment on the basis of the advisories published by Susam Pal, to find out how long
1426-587: The Star Wars film 'Revenge of the Sith', in what was called by Screenrant "a clear example of nefarious manipulation". In December 2017, Fandango received hundreds of complaints regarding its delivery of Star Wars: The Last Jedi tickets. Forbes reported that issues began within hours of advanced sales' becoming available for the new Star Wars film, with customers complaining of long wait times and website glitches. In early 2016, Fandango acquired M-GO, which
1488-848: The U.S. as of February 20, 2018. Starting in late January 2018, visitors to Flixster.com were encouraged to download the Flixster app or were redirected to Fandango.com. They were also directed to continue watching videos and redeeming digital codes via Vudu. In February 2018, the Flixster website was no longer functioning and directed users to Fandango.com. Flixster Video's website and mobile apps, including UltraViolet code redemption, streaming, and downloading services are still available in other countries such as Canada . Flixster account holders would later have any of their purchased content sent to its competitor Vudu. In June 2019, Flixster announced that it would shut down its streaming video services in all countries in which Flixster Video operates outside of
1550-500: The U.S. on October 31, 2019, due to the shutdown of UltraViolet. Customers in those areas were asked to transfer their content to Google Play , although Flixster warned users that due to rights restrictions, not all videos purchased on a Flixster library would be transferable depending on country. Between November 2006 and January 2007, the number of daily page views reported for Flixster by Alexa Toolbar users rose from fewer than 20 million to around 50 million. Quantcast reported that
1612-491: The US, after which MovieTickets.com's fellow shareholders sued AMC for breach of contract. AMC and MovieTickets.com settled in 2013, with an agreement that the theater chain's online ticketing would be available on both Fandango and MovieTickets.com. In May 2012, Fandango announced a partnership with Moviefone , MovieTickets.com's former partner. Atom Tickets , a movie ticketing app and website launched in 2014, has been called
1674-534: The United Arab Emirates followed the footsteps of Iran in blocking the site. This block was subsequently removed in October 2006. On July 3, 2007, Gulf News revisited the issue, publishing complaints from members of the public against Orkut communities like "Dubai Sex", and officially bringing the complaints to the attention of the state telecom monopoly Etisalat . By July 4, 2007, Etisalat placed
1736-498: The additional option of creating either restricted or unrestricted polls for polling a community of users. There was at one point an option to integrate GTalk with Orkut, enabling chat and file sharing. Similar to Facebook, users could also use a "like" button to share interests with friends. Users could also change their interface from a wide range of colorful themes in the library. Themes were only available in Brazil and India. Orkut
1798-467: The community as bogus to Google, which could result in its removal. The community has now been deleted but has spawned several 'We hate those who hate India' communities. Prior to the 60th Independence Day of India, Orkut's main page was revamped. The section which usually displayed a collage of photos of various people, showed a stylized Orkut logo. The word Orkut was written in Devanagari script and
1860-633: The crimes that had occurred in Orkut. Orkut had a Report Abuse feature available for all communities, which could be reported if they contain hateful/violent content. Orkut was very popular in Iran, but the website was then blocked by the government . According to official reports, this was due to national security issues, and issues about dating and match-making. To get around this block, sites such as orkutproxy.com (now defunct) were made for Iranian users. Other websites such as Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups had communities dedicated to receiving updates on
1922-550: The deal, Warner Bros. would become a 30% shareholder of the combined Fandango company. Its stake was reduced to 25% by 2019. In December 2016, Fandango Media purchased Cinepapaya , a Peru-based website for purchasing movie tickets, for an undisclosed amount. Later that same month, Fandango moved to Fox Interactive Media's former headquarters in Beverly Hills. On April 20, 2020, Vudu announced it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Fandango Media. The sale
Flixster - Misplaced Pages Continue
1984-630: The infected user. According to statements made by Google, as noted in Facetime's Greynets Blog, the company had implemented a temporary fix for the dangerous worm. On June 22, 2007 Susam Pal and Vipul Agarwal published a security advisory on Orkut vulnerabilities related to authentication issues. The vulnerabilities were considered very dangerous in cybercafes, or in the case of man-in-the-middle attack as they could lead to session hijacking and misuse of legitimate accounts. The vulnerabilities were not known to be fixed yet and therefore posed threat to
2046-504: The information, on the grounds that the requested information is on Google servers in the U.S. and not Google servers in Brazil, and is therefore not subject to Brazilian laws . On June 30, 2014, Google announced that Orkut would be shutting down completely on September 30, 2014. Users could export their photo albums before the final shutdown date. Orkut profiles, scraps, testimonials, and community posts could be exported until September 2016. Google engineering director Paulo Golgher said in
2108-461: The introduction of the New Orkut, users had two options to message friends: via the scrapbook (equivalent to the Facebook wall) or by sending a private message. Since the New Orkut introduced a privacy control for scraps posted to the scrapbook, the messages system was disabled in this version, but not for those still using the old version. This created a strange situation in which messages sent by
2170-529: The issue of charging the accused under the (Indian) Information Technology Act, 2000 perhaps because Orkut was believed to be a mode of communication for drug abuses of this kind. The police in India have entered into an agreement with Orkut to have a facility to catch and prosecute those misusing Orkut since complaints are rising. On August 22, 2006, Brazilian Federal Judge José Marcos Lunardelli ordered Google to release by September 28 Orkut user's information of
2232-528: The name for use by the professional wrestler Fandango (né Johnny Curtis) . In August 2014, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) approved final orders settling charges against Fandango for misrepresenting to the public the security of their mobile app and for failing to protect the transmission of Fandango customers' sensitive personal information. The Fandango mobile app assured consumers, during checkout, that their credit card information
2294-495: The new Orkut. The new logo also had the word "My" in it, as in My Orkut. Vertical scroll bars were added in the friend and community list in the home page to allow viewing all friends/communities from the home page itself. In the home page, the recent visitor's list now displayed six most recent visitor's profile image as small clickable icons. Orkut also allowed users to sign in with their Google Mail, or Gmail, credentials. Before
2356-446: The newest location of Iran's Orkut proxy. At one time it had been possible to bypass governmental blockage of Orkut, but the site had closed its HTTPS pages on all anonymous proxies. Then it was almost impossible for ordinary users to visit this site inside Iran. Many other sites have been published in Iran since Orkut's blockage, using the same social-networking model – examples include MyPardis, Cloob and Bahaneh. In August 2006,
2418-415: The number of global daily page views for Flixster.com peaked at 8,331,961 on January 23, 2008, and dropped to 1,325,685 by July 5, 2008. Alexa stopped reporting daily page views as of June 2008; the number of page views for Flixster as a percentage decreased by nearly two-thirds from mid-December 2007 to mid-June 2008. Flixster's Facebook application, Movies, was consistently one of the most popular apps on
2480-412: The old one. Google stated the new Orkut was faster, simpler, and more customizable. More particular features included video chat, promotions and easy navigation. The look was completely new. User interface and workflow were also drastically changed. Orkut added different color choices for the users' profiles. The themes were eventually removed and an Orkut badge was visible for those who didn't change to
2542-505: The profiles were often left unremoved or, when removed, recreated easily. In 2005, incidents of racism among Orkut users were reported to police and were documented in Brazilian media. In 2006, a judicial measure was opened by Brazilian courts denouncing a 20-year-old student accused of racism against those of Black/African ancestry and spreading defamatory content on Orkut. Brazilian Federal Justice subpoenaed Google in March 2006 to explain
Flixster - Misplaced Pages Continue
2604-400: The settings page. Scraps were also HTML-enabled letting users post videos or pictures. On November 8, 2007, Orkut greeted its Indian users Happy Diwali by allowing them to change their Orkut look to a Diwali-flavored reddish theme. On April Fools' Day 2008, Orkut temporarily changed its name on its webpage to yogurt, apparently as a prank. On June 2, 2008, Orkut launched its theming engine with
2666-493: The showtime of their film. Fandango's Android app was listed among Techland's 50 Best Android Applications for 2013. Until its acquisition of its rival MovieTickets.com in 2017, Fandango was one of three major online advance movie ticket sale sites, along with MovieTickets.com and Atom Tickets . Before being acquired by Comcast in April 2007, Fandango was privately owned; its major stakeholder , Regal Cinemas , which owned
2728-514: The site, the website was criticized on numerous Internet blogs . At one point, email from Flixster to Hotmail users was being filtered and deleted as spam. The company allowed users to watch movies on several different platforms via UltraViolet . Flixster developed applications for several social networking sites. They had many of the same features as the main Flixster site including ratings, reviews, and user-generated quizzes. In addition, all offered social media integration and mobile app usage
2790-544: The site; its daily user totals peaked in December 2007. By September 2010, its popularity had waned significantly; its 2.98 million monthly active users placed the Movies app as the ninth most-used entertainment application on Facebook and 92nd among apps overall. Flixster Collections, a desktop application featuring a content discovery and management system , began open beta testing on August 4, 2011. Flixster's growth
2852-444: The study after Fandango announced the purchase of Rotten Tomatoes amid fears that the purchase would "ruin" the site. Other complaints have concerned apparent political bias, with an analysis of Rotten Tomatoes scores seemingly preferencing films which exhibit progressive values and down-rating conservative ones. Other criticisms suggest score manipulation for commercial reasons: in 2012, 32 million audience votes suddenly appeared for
2914-518: The user join the virus related community and infect all friends' scrapbooks with copies of itself, the worm infected over 700,000 Orkut users . The worm spread through Orkut's tool that allows users to write messages that contain HTML code. On October 10, 2006, the Bombay High Court 's Aurangabad bench served a notice on Google for allowing a hate campaign against India. This referred to
2976-457: The user profile photo (or alternatively, clicking the blue settings link at the top of any page). On September 4, 2007, Orkut announced that user would be able to see an "Updates from your friends" box on the homepage, where it would be possible to obtain real-time updates when friends made changes to their profiles, photos and videos. Moreover, in case someone wanted to keep some information on their profile private, Orkut added an opt-out button on
3038-417: The user's address book and required the user to manually un-select each address to prevent email from being sent to a user. Cofounder Joe Greenstein described the difference between Flixster and other sites as: "We make it easy to invite your friends. Other sites don't provide good ways for people to spread the word." As a consequence of its policy of emailing users' entire address books with advertisements for
3100-421: The way you view your friends, 9 rather than 8 of your friends displayed on your homepage and profile page and basic links to your friends' content right under their profile picture as you browse through their different pages. It also announced the initial release of Orkut in 6 new languages: Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. Profile editing could then take place by clicking the settings button under
3162-476: The website was reactivated. Orkut's features and interface changed significantly with time. Initially, each member could become a fan of any of the friends in their list and also evaluate whether their friend is "Trustworthy", "Cool", "Sexy" on a scale of 1 to 3 (marked by icons), which was aggregated as a percentage. Unlike Facebook, where one can only view profile details of people in their network, Orkut initially allowed anyone to visit everyone's profile, unless
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#17327869562413224-501: Was also released. The app handled only movie streaming, as the function was removed from the Movies by Flixster app. In November 2017, the Flixster app was removed from all non-U.S. stores. It was later restored in 2018, though without support for finding local movie screening times. Fandango Media Fandango Media, LLC is an American ticketing company that sells movie tickets via their website and their mobile app . It also owns Fandango at Home (formerly known as Vudu),
3286-603: Was arguably 'the only thriving social networking site' in India during 2005–2008. Orkut was the first Google customer to have OpenSocial support. Orkut was quietly launched on January 22, 2004 by Orkut Büyükkökten , a Turkish software engineer, developed it as an independent project while working at Google. While previously working for Affinity Engines, he had developed a similar system, InCircle, intended for use by university alumni groups. In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Büyükkökten and Google had based Orkut on InCircle code. The allegation
3348-548: Was colored in Indian national colors . Clicking on the logo redirects to a post by the Orkut India ProductManager, Manu Rekhi, on the Orkut internal blog. There has also been some media outcry against Orkut after a couple of youngsters were apparently lured by fake profiles on the site and later murdered. On November 24, 2006, Bombay High Court asked the state government to file its reply in connection with
3410-410: Was completed on July 6, 2020. On July 16, 2024, Fandango founder J. Michael Cline died by suicide at the age of 64. Fandango's website also offers exclusive film clips, trailers, celebrity interviews, reviews by users, movie descriptions, and some web-based games to Fandango members. As of March 5, 2015, Fandango provides members the ability to refund or exchange their orders up to 2 hours before
3472-414: Was described in the trade press as attributable to "its aggressive viral marketing practices," including "the automated selection of your email account's entire address book in order to send a Flixster invitation to all of your contacts." Although the company claimed that the procedure was an industry standard used by other services, Flixster differed in that its system automatically selected all contacts in
3534-648: Was named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten . Orkut was one of the most visited websites in India and Brazil in 2008. In that year, Google announced Orkut would be fully managed and operated in Brazil, by Google Brazil, in the city of Belo Horizonte . This was decided due to the large Brazilian user base and growth of legal issues. On June 30, 2014, Google announced it would be closing Orkut on September 30, 2014. No new accounts could be created starting from July 2014. Users could download their profile archive by Google Takeout . In April 2022,
3596-630: Was offered free-of-charge, allowing more users to download it. The first of the apps was released in June 2007 on Facebook. In March 2008, a MySpace app followed which had 3,923,506 users as of July 2008. That made it the then-fourth most popular application on the MySpace platform. In addition, Flixster also developed applications for Bebo and Orkut . In August 2008, Flixster released an iOS application which allowed users to access movie showtimes, reviews, and trailers. The iPhone and iPod app for Flixster
3658-487: Was re-branded FandangoNOW. Fandango later purchased Vudu in July 2020. FandangoNOW later merged with Vudu on August 3, 2021. Fandango chose to retain the "Vudu" name as it was the larger service with a loyal customer base. Orkut Orkut was a social networking service owned and operated by Google . The service was designed to help users meet new and old friends and maintain existing relationships. The website
3720-875: Was stored and transmitted securely. However, the FTC claims against Fandango focused on failures relating to both the implementation and testing of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates for 4 years following the mobile app's launch in March 2009. According to the FTC, Fandango commissioned security audits in 2011, but the audits were limited in scope and did not review the security of the app's transmission of information. The FTC also alleged that Fandango did not implement effective channels for security complaints and instead relied on its general customer service system to handle security vulnerability reporting. Rotten Tomatoes has received several criticisms relating to its scoring. In October 2015, FiveThirtyEight published
3782-464: Was then the number one movie app on the platform. Flixster also released apps for Android mobile phones, Windows Phone , and BlackBerry phones. In August 2010, Flixster got to 20 million combined mobile app downloads and was ranked as the top movie app on iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry. In April 2014, Flixster's app was updated with Chromecast support allowing users to "cast" movies to a Chromecast-connected device. A streaming-only app, Flixster Video,
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#17327869562413844-419: Was triggered as users launched an executable file disguised as a JPEG file. The initial executable file that caused the infection installed two additional files on the user's computer. These files then e-mailed banking details and passwords to the worm's anonymous creator when infected users clicked on the "My Computer" icon. The infection spread automatically by posting a URL in another user's Orkut Scrapbook,
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