Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

moviefone im

AOL introduced a Moviefone bot for its AOL Instant Messenger service in the latter half of last year. I don’t know how heavily used it will be, but it’s an interesting, right-to-the-point way of searching for movie times. Users can instant-message AOL screenname “Moviefone” with a keyword for a movie, actor or director they’re interested in, and the bot will message back with the results. It’s pretty fast, and there’s no waiting for pages and ads to load.

My main gripe with the service (aside from the lack of instructions at the very beginning; type “help” when you first start out to get your bearings) is that there’s no way to directly search for a particular theatre or zip code. To see all showtimes at a given theatre, the user has to first pick their movie, search for theatres in their chosen zip code showing that movie, and then select the theatre. I don’t see why I can’t just type in a zip code right away, just as I can search for a movie, actor or director. I’m generally more interested in what’s playing nearby than in what might be playing anywhere.