Hello all, I did look to see if a thread on this existed but... Anyone here who used to use StarNow before their disastrous "upgrade" to the Backstage platform? It's basically rendered the website useless, to the point where they don't let you cancel your subscription or delete your profile!
I had several years of photos, recommendations and past and ongoing casting applications all gone.
I had an automatic email from them on the Friday before last containing a link to a page where you can select which option you want them to apply in handling your data - to restore your ore-update profile data, continue with the (mostly empty) profile, or copy your Backstage profile (if you have one). I chose the first option. The data restore still hasn't happened though, and they haven't replied to several messages I've sent them asking for an ETA.
I'm thus now working on building it all from scratch, as I (literally) can't afford to gamble on it being restored any time soon
I don't understand how they thought that doing this was the right thing to do for StarNow. Yes it was an old site, but it was intuitive, engaging and it worked in ultimately bringing casting and talent together! Now they don't even appear to have a category for photographers, unless you want to be titled as "Director of Photography"(!) I too lost a lot of recommendations and a long list of previous credits, as well as a place in what was the top 5% of the listed photographers... Aside from PP, Model Mayhem and Mandy, what are other alternatives?
I used it extensively for castings for a long time. And in my view have committed business suicide since the upgrade. Its just not useable.
Lost portfolio and references. Now seems to not be a site for photographers to use. And that’s before we get on to the terrible new CMS.
Did backstage buy StarNow?
It is likely just teething problems with the upgrade that appears to have happened around May 2nd. I am certain their devs are on the case and working double-time to resolve any issues.
If it was mine I'd ask anyone with issues to raise a support ticket as tracking people's issues on places like twitter and FB is really horrible and just increases the workload.
Unfortunately it's a wholesale overwrite in the way the old StarNow site used to work, in effect they have plugged in the Backstage platform, ported some of the old data and branded it as StarNow, but none of the old and useful functionality that StarNow had as been ported across and the more "social" process of "likes" and references and the more sensible categories all appear to have been dropped in favour of the platform they use elsewhere. I understand the economies associated with the idea, but if they had looked at the StarNow community and perhaps even Beta tested with some of the existing user community, at least they would have been perceived to have tried. Instead they have alienated what was a loyal platform community and then stopped them leaving and trapped some with auto-renewing subs! Perhaps they factored in some significant losses, but it does not reflect well on the new management and the old management I presume are off somewhere on their retirement now!
I used Mandy.com much more than Starnow. Sad to see it also swallowed up by Backstage.
Castingnow.co.uk appears to have survived. Although the search facilities on that site are rubbish.
Edited by Crippen
JASC Photography said
But I have managed to cancel the auto renew for the subscription now!
you may want to keep checking that, or cancel at payment source, as some of the reports on places like Facebook suggested it would reinstate itself.
Their approach was a mess. Literally 24 hours before an email saying it would go down 'soon'. No mention of when or length and no chance to move comms elsewhere if you were mid casting. So many bugs and pretty much silence from them since. I have a few castings up there, but nowhere near the usual interest right now...
I hope it does get better as use it a lot for castings in Australia - but do wonder if their aim is to shut Starnow down and get people using Backstage, as this was a text book case of how not to do a deployment.
I think we're all in the same boat with this - I was in the process of casting and contacting people all of which just vanished overnight. I wouldn't have minded so much if they'd sent a notification to warn of the impending "upgrade", I could have logged/copied the relevant messages etc.
As said by others here, it seems they're trying to shoehorn the Starnow site into the Backroom format and it's not going so well.
For me, the simplicity and functionality of the pre-revamp Starnow was its main attraction. I could do everything I needed/wanted to do in a very few mouse clicks - now even simple tasks are laborious and complicated with too many options and a very confusing and illogical interface. I endeavoured to list myself as a Photographer a few days ago - it is actually possible but it appears in the Crew options in a drop down menu (Roles/Skills) that includes every job imaginable - it took me 25 seconds just to scroll to the letter P (true).
On the upside; Some of my messages with other members have now re-appeared, but not all. Some of the listings under "Saved talent" have reappeared, but not all. Perhaps things will sort themselves out over the coming weeks, but I shan't get my hopes up.
My subscription was up for renewal anyway and so I've cancelled.
Edited by Simon Cole
for some reason they have been sending me nightly casting calls to my email odd as have only ever looked at the site
Peanuts said
for some reason they have been sending me nightly casting calls to my email odd as have only ever looked at the site
Snap, usually at around 0130, I seem to recall doing a soft sign up a couple of years ago but decided it wasn't for me so I closed the account, or so I thought.
I got an automated response to my query tonight. This is part of the response:
Profile Migrations:
Although we automatically moved as much data as possible of your old StarNow profile into the new profile format when we launched, you might find that not everything has completed migration yet.
We are still working on migrating all elements of your profile and can confirm that no data has been lost or deleted – it just hasn’t moved over yet.
If you find you are still missing images/video files from your profile, please check your emails for a message from us regarding instructions for the migration of these assets (note that these may have gone to your spam/junk folder - depending on your email settings).
Once you select a preference, the migration can commence - please allow 7-10 days for the data to complete migration.
If you haven’t received this email, it means we are still working on your migration, and no clarification is needed from you for this to complete - please allow until the end of the week for the data migration to complete to your profile, and then get in touch again if files are still missing from your profile.
Your messages, credits and recommendations are expected to migrate over in the coming days and will be completed shortly – no additional information is needed from you for these to be processed.
Thinking of leaving and Mandy now. Wondering why I an paying two subscriptions for the same thing. Well it is tax deductible.
Edited by Jessica Knight