This has now happened to me twice today. This morning, I was checking out some movie reviews over at IMDB. Someone had writtedn an interesting title in one of their forums posts way down below, so I clicked on it to read the post, which sent me to a registration screen. Now, let me be clear here – I wasn’t trying to respond to a post, I was only trying to read it. Registration at IMDB is free so, though I was slightly annoyed, I started the signup process. The server timed out. Then I had to wait for a confirmation email from the system to complete the registration, which took more than five minutes to arrive at my inbox. By then, I already gave up and moved on. They lost me, all because they wanted me to register to read a single forum posting.

Laster on, I decided to get some information about Katamari Damacy by Namco. I went to the official Namco site, which has a few screenshots and such but, more importantly, advertises a couple of videos showing off the gameplay, which is really what I cared about. Upon clicking on the video link, it prompts me to sign up for an account just to view a couple of videos that help advertise the game they make and sell. So, in order for me to actively research an item they’re advertising, I have to go through the effort of signing up to their system, probably with the same brain-dead “confirm via email” system every other reg site seems to require.

It’s not that I don’t want to give away my person information – I typically provide the least amount of required info for these things anyway. I have come to expect a certain amount of instant gratification from the web. It is, in fact, the biggest selling point of the web – ask and ye shall receive instantly. It’s in both IMDB’s and Namco’s best interests for me to view the thing they’re guarding – I’m a set of eyeballs, after all. If I like what I see, I’ll probably post it here, which means many of you will visit those sites as well. If you like what you see, you’ll probably share it as well, on and on and on. So what’s more valuable – a little bit of marketing data or several interested individuals viewing your marketing message?

If I were getting something of value – a free eBook, some cool tchochke, anything, really, that I can actually use – going through the effort of filling out a reg form would be no problem. I’m not a fan of filling out reg forms for online newspapers, but I also believe that, usually, it’s worth it because I’ll probably wind up reading their stories going forward and, hey, filling out a quick form saved me from digging out a quarter or two and going down to the 7-11 to buy a copy. But the only reason I wanted to see the KD video was to help me decide whether purchasing the game is worth it. The only reason I wanted to read the IMDB forum post – which, by the way, had apparently been deleted by the admin despite the fact that they were still advertising it as available – was to help me decide whether seeing a particular movie was worth it. In both cases, the site stood to make money based on my decision – Namco if I bought the game, IMDB if their forum post enticed me to see the movie and, thus, validate their importance in the eyes of movie advertisers. Because of their lame-ass reg systems, though, they lost me on both counts. Now they have to hope that something else will convince me to make the buy. That’s just bad business.