Why did we change our name to MUBI?

Christ, I’m getting flashbacks to the SEGA logo.

Moderated

^^Maybe they already did, then realized how stupid it was, so they changed it back.

I’m sorry but MUBI is just a plain stupid name.

good thing i didn’t invest in creating a t-shirt with ‘theauteurs’ logo on it (something i’d have been proud of)… it would be like when a favorite team player moves on; what good is the old jersey?… is the new name how the creator’s youngster pronounces ‘movie’?

Now they’ll have to mar Criterion’s webpage with ‘MUBI’. Sigh.

What disappoints me most about the name change is the fact the members here had absolutely NO INPUT into this decision. It is now given to us as a fait accompli (I’m sorry for using French on a site now calling itself Mubi).

It’s like, well, screw the forum. I know over the year and a half I have been on site, the needs of the forum community have always taken a back burner to everything else going on. The forum just kind of keeps on ticking on its own crazy way, with little staff input. I guess it really is now all about making money and branding.

I thought this was supposed to be a community of like-minded, informed, and committed people who joined a site where they could freely exchange ideas, discuss films, share a laugh or insight. Now it is clear it was all about corporate branding and trying to get a bigger share of the buck all along. Too bad, I say.

At least we – the dedicated auteurs (whoops, sorry about that, I mean Mubi) forum community – know where we stand – which is currently way behind the corporate Mubi 8-ball. No need to lament this change, as our voices don’t really count for a damn here, anyway. Carry on.

Also that they have no sense of humour about it at all!

Reminds me of Ubisoft and their marketing campaigns… just a bit too much….

Does the presence of the Amazon banner irritate anyone else?

I don’t care about the banner, really. I understand money has to reach the creators, but… the name.. oh fuck….

Maybe this is what Efe wants to happen. Maybe he’s hoping that all the cinephiles will be so outraged at the stupidity of the name change and what kind of crowd it will inevitably attract (Tarantino loving tweeters who watch movies on their iphones) that they’ll never come back and thus creating an ipso-facto IMDB. Seems logical…

I just see Mumbai when I look at it. Did the investors buy in?

I got my first abuse warning… yaaay….

[rethinking]
I joined the Auteurs about a week ago, and it was the curiosity towards the name that appeared in a random google search that made me investigate: “a film community?” asked myself, and I gave it a try.
Now, would a name like “Mubi” ring any bell on my head?: the sound, when you spell it, it’s not pleasant or inducing of any imaginary. Mubi is a silly, nauseating and dead word. Don’t these guys have any aesthetic taste?

I wish we could just move this whole shebang of members formerly known as the auteurs community over to some place else. If we could start our own site – free from corporate interference – that would be great!

Imagine: a bunch of crazy cinephiles who were once damned glad to get out of the mindless muddle, who could get together to coagulate and communicate. We could call it the auteurs 2: back from the living mubi dead. This would be the true site, then, for all those that love fine cinema and aren’t afraid to say so. Awesome!

Edit: What ever happened to that old adage: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? Can we start a recall campaign?

“MUBI” is a really bad choice for a name.

On the one hand, I do understand the reasons behind the change and they can be summed up in two words: branding and marketing. (There’s nothing new here.) Furthermore, the previous name belong to a language and the mark of this belonging was in the way of the site’s desire for universalism, so to speak: its desire for a worldwide scope in terms of linguistic and even, to some extent, cultural borders. Thus, the quest for an apparently universal name came into being: a name that would supposedly be easy to spell, to write and to speak, in many different languages. Besides, it would need no translation. It would be (like) a proper name and this condition means it would escape translation. The chosen name seems to fit into this desire for universalism. Indeed it is easier to spell, to write and to speak “MUBI” in different languages.

However, on the other hand, “MUBI” represents the very impossibility of the desired universalism: “MUBI” echoes “movie” and, in its implications, this echo insidiously contains its universalist claim into a particular cultural and linguistic context. This is what makes the name unbearable, imho. The fact that it doesn’t mean anything is indeed not so harmful as the fact that it disguises a particular cultural and linguistic idiom as a universal(ist) word which nevertheless remains contained within ethnocentric references.

From the perspective of the site as business, the bottomline is: if you paid for such a stup** new name, it was a bad business decision, to say the least. From the perspective of the site as a virtual space for the convergence of cinefiles, the bottomline is: MUBI represents an impoverishment of the original name’s implications and connotations and it is indeed a way to simply sell out the fruitful athmosphere of the site to branding and marketing concerns that don’t belong here. Good cinema loses again.

I have a suggestion to the Mubi administration: posting a graphic, simple questionnaire, on the Home page, asking “Do you like(/agree with) the new name?:” 1- yes, 2 – no, 3 – indifferent. One way of assessing the reception of the fashion surgery and being more attentive to it’s users opinion or feeling; and of being also (and this is very important) able to cope with it’s own mistakes, and not ignoring everyone, waiting for things to calm down.
Ideal it would have been to do it before, but some people like surprises.
The graphic would show the results after one week.

“Mubi” only sounds like “movie” in Spanish (the fact that the letter “b” is surrounded by vowels gives it a “v” pronunciation…which reminds me…how do you spell “auteurs” again?

MUBI just sounds too much like HULU and all the other sites. I could work to attract the type of mindless consumer that is attacted to novelty. Maybe “The Auteurs” was not super oringinal but it had a certain class to it.

PS
I thought I had a virus when I tried to open this page.

simulacra?

ugh

Obviously I have some catching up to, but is there any sound reason why the name was changed besides people being unable to spell? I mean really, WTF.

i ♥ the auteurs. Says it all.

Yes, it’s a dumb name. Yes, it’s a terrible decision, a symptom of capitalist greed. Yes, it continues the all-too-common cycle: something genuinely new and fresh is created, gains popularity, gains financial viability, becomes a commodity, looks to expand by appealing to the masses, becomes mainstream, loses its heart and soul. It happens all the time – this is corporate culture in a nutshell. And yes, a poll would have been useful, if only to warn the site’s owners of the backlash that was going to inevitably ensue.

Ironically, this is a clear example of a company underestimating the power of branding – ironic because branding was the impetus of the name change in the first place.

All the same, this discussion strikes me as a classic case for the Facebook group “First World Problems”.

I mean, let’s face it. There are people dying of AIDS, malaria and dirty water, and people are infuriated at a new name for a website? Some perspective, please.

(P.S.: 9 months for a marketing agency to come up with ‘Mubi’. LOL. Must have been a lot of coffee breaks).

While I don’t agree with the name MUBI, I don’t see how it’ll attract ‘the wrong crowd’. People will b*tch and moan about the name change, but I’m sure the demographic will remain the same.

If a random Michael Bay fan accidentally wandered upon Mubi, he’s not going to be interested, just by glancing with his beady little eyes (via Bay-Vision) at minimalistic aesthetics of the front page.

Michael Bay is an auteur.

“While Mubi is still cash-flow negative, Cakarel expects to turn the corner within the year.”

If it was not all the time invested… but as some people have already pointed, one good indicator is that I wouldn’t recommend a site named MUBI to my friends, because I’m embarrassed of it. But I have recommended The Auteurs and some signed in.
It’s not funny.
I only bought 8€ till now, because I just started. I regret it, I really do. You start to like something and you give value to it, you pay for the films even if you can get them for free. But now what does it matter.

I think that even after all this initial investment of many hours in this site, I thought not wasted, I’ll have to rethink it all over. I tried facebook for one month and erased all the information after testing. I thought this was different.
Some people have principles… Hard thinking next days.

I think I can say that most of us feel betrayed and stupefied – an assault to our intelligent was perpetrated with no other than economical proposes.
I’ll see, we’ll see.

And I think we all want to hear more from the administration or the guys that Can give voice, more explanations and maybe an apology for the way we were treated would lessen the many open wounds. Some decency, It’s lacking, I gather.
Our dignity was not an issue – and I will not be an hypothetical imperative, never. We will not be the means of economical vampirism.

It is still possible to redo things.

We the users demand the right to be heard. Up the proletariat and down with the tyrants.

My head has been spinning, i find myself in a Con-Dem nation in the UK, i went to sleep this evening (hardly ever happened before) and woke up at 9pm, thinking it must be morning, and then i find my leisure time has been subjected to a Mubi take-over.

But it’s ok folks, this isn’t really happening, and you’re not really reading this cos i’m now off to bed safe in the knowledge that i’ll awake to find it’s all been a bad dream. After all, who with a brain cell and even 1/4 human would come up with a name like Mubi? It could only be the work of an alien, (mubi is a much loved word on the planet Zangelboog), or an even weirder and extremely sad and overpaid creature known as a marketing publicist, ha, and of course auteurs wouldn’t stoop to that

I may now start a vicious rant full of expletives and the most disgusting porn pics ever on the web, knowing it doesn’t matter cos it isn’t happening, but i’m too tired. Night all, and you won’t be able to reply or tell me first thing tomorrow yes it was just a dream, cos this post doesn’t even exist! You bunch of non-existent flooby-doobies

“The word “movie” is mispronounced in many cultures that have trouble with the letter V. It isn’t a word in any language. It is a city in Nigeria. And Cakarel plans to make that city the movie-lover capital of the world.”

Yeh, it’s like the new film, Biutiful. What can you expect, When you have headless in charge of the boat – all the globalization and Benetton cool races is wonderful!!! Now we are the Benetton of film, this lost any personality that had before, now it’s vide/empty/vazio.

But now we have it – it’s frustrating -, all good good good intentions (it’s like “goodfellas”, they are all goodfellas, but…). Good intentions never made good films, or literature, or any art.

Good art has to have one’s perspective or point of view, personality: The Auteurs good or snobbish or irritationg, it was something; in the other hand Mubi is just blank, blank. Now we are all part of this blankness

Thanks Efe, our plan to distract people from the controversy over my profile page appears to be working;)

If what many people have suggested will happen on all these threads comes to pass I can simply quit the site and continue to correspond privately with members I respect. If not, I can continue to enjoy the site. I have no idea what Efe’s financial situation is but if changing the name keeps the site from going under I’ll have to support the decision, for now.