Moviefone Is Killing Off Its Namesake Phone Number

Hello, and welcome to Moviefone!!

The early 90’s was a strange time.

Computers were becoming fairly commonplace, but the Internet still wasn’t. We pumped out new technology that defined our lives for a week, only to be forgotten the next. We were still trying to figure out what the future looked like.

So many things seemed brilliant at the time, only to be rendered useless by the end of the decade. Remember pagers?

Remember when we didn’t have a universe of information tucked into a little box in our pocket?

Remember when dialing a phone number to get information from a robot was mind blowing?

Remember calling 411? or POPCORN? or Moviefone?

In the coming weeks, that last one will stop answering.

In a statement to the New York Times, Moviefone confirms that they’re going to be shutting down the dial-in number that launched the company back in 1989.

Why? Because, as you might expect, usage of the phone number has tanked. You can hardly get people to call each other any more, much less get them to call a number for something they could find online in a heartbeat.

Moviefone as a company will stick around, albeit refocused around its web services and apps.

Alas, “Movieapp” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

(While we’re waxing all nostalgic: Remember away messages? Remember when you used to be able to get away from the Internet?)

[Disclosure: AOL owns Moviefone. AOL also owns TechCrunch.]