PREVIEWSworld is no more.
I went last night to get a link to an article I’d written for a cover letter I was writing — yes, still on the hunt, rationing my meds, and #OpenToWork — and I got a 404 error. When I went to previewsworld.com directly, I was redirected to an Enesco website.
Don’t worry about the link. diamondcomics.com is still up, I know how links are built from Diamond’s CMS, and I could edit the URL to get what I needed for the cover letter. I also have PDFs of all the writing samples I could possibly need, and in a pinch I could find an archive.org link. All is good on that score, anyway.
Still, the death of Diamond’s websites was inevitable. The product database underneath the sites ceased working a long time ago, which I discovered when I tried to go to some product pages. (I wanted a screenshot of the product copy I wrote for the Funko POP! Oasis figures, which showed it was clearly written by a fan.) The websites became zombies, monuments to the bankruptcy that ended the company.
I have complicated feelings about PREVIEWSworld. It was a B2C website for a B2B business, and the visibility of PREVIEWSworld, because it was public facing, gave it a focus that was difficult to justify, which is why its content managers held a role that proved easy to cut in leaner years when layoffs came. I’m not criticizing the people who worked on PREVIEWSworld; they’re good people, they’re friends and mentors, they did good and admirable work, and I posted articles there, too. It’s the decision-making above that I questioned then, question now, and will question into the future.
My vision of Diamond’s websites was simple — one website.
If a visitor weren’t logged in — in other words, if they’re just a consumer — they would see consumer-oriented content, like product listings, shipping lists, and news.
If a visitor were logged in — retailer or vendor — then they would see the consumer content as well as specific content; for retailers, content like sale articles (my liquidation lists), data files to run the business, ecommerce tools (ie., monthly and weekly ordering pages), etc.; for vendors, product management tools.
But this would have required investment in time and resources, perhaps even outsourcing to an ecommerce specialist, and that was not the Diamond way. The world changed, Diamond did not, and, to quote Asimov, “Changlessness is decay.”
Nonetheless, I will pour one out for PREVIEWSworld. It was a good little site, run by good people, and I was always happy to be a part of it.
Sleep well, old friend.