The TV.com Golden Era
The TV.com Golden Era was an era before the days of The SpongeBob Community within the TV.com Spongebob boards, described to be a peaceful, memorable, and fun period, starting since its inception in June 2005 with the acquisition of TV Tome. The activity of the site would increase overtime with its message boards and subsequent off-topic lounge threads that provided for its userbase to engage in social interaction. It was in this time that several users initially met each other, mingled, and posted on a frequent basis. Several users who have originated from the SpongeBob boards would later become among the first SBC members. These members that have frequented the SpongeBob forums included Clappy, Jelly, terminoob, Wumbo, SpongeSebastian, CDCB, dragiiin123, tvguy, Steel Sponge, SpongeOddFan, jjsthekid and others. However, the popularity of the website would begin to wane during 2009 due to the prevalence of users getting suspened and banned due to the site's Terms of Service rules. Due to it giving certain members, notably WhaleBlubber, the ability to incite attacks by reporting multiple posts, it was relatively easy to end up getting banned from the site. These misfortunate events would lead to the creations of the TV.com Refuge forums and as well as The SpongeBob Community in August 2009. The era would come to an end in the Summer of 2010 when an attack on the SpongeBob boards carried out by WhaleBlubber led to various members getting banned, while also leading up to most of its notable members to completely migrate to The SpongeBob Community, effectively killing most of the remaining interest and activity on the TV.com boards in the process.
Overview
TV.com was the fan-fun database website devoted to the users who contributes on the television shows that they can submitted episode notes, goofs, quote & show/episode reviews. Before TV.com existed, there was TV Tome which is runs by users. It’s the site for the community where the users add/remove show news, episode guide, notes etc. TV Tome did have popular feature called forum that can be found on every TV show page. Although, it wasn’t that active until TV.com boards became very popular in next few years. On April 22, 2005, CNET announced their acquisition of TV Tome that they planned to rebrand to TV.com in June. TV.com became one of the popular sites for years until the decline in 2010.it also shows first SBC members before coming to their own SpongeBob forum.
2005
The era started it off with TV.com when we had first few members in that year such as SpongeSeb, spongedude and many others who joined in 2005. Not much active that year which be situated obviously that been silent. It may be the case of the boards was not active especially the site was just new to the users.
2006
That year saw sparks some activity around 2006 with more new users joined such as Crazy_Odd2006 etc. there were significant event that took place at the time. That year saw early introduction of SpongeBob fans creating their own Spin-off series in their own thread, but some users were annoyed the amount of new Spin-off threads were spread, and it must be stopped.
In late-May 2006, the tv.com user named sandyrox advertised her own SB ProBoards which saw the peak of proboard era. However, it was unsuccessful unlike the next two years.
On June 4, 2006, the users had experienced with every show guide is missing including SB guide. Some users think Digger3000 lost his editorship temporary. It turns out TV Tome_Shadow is new editorship for SB guide which also reveals both Digger3000 & DebStich (who was the 2nd highest user on tv.com), and DebStich was banned because he gaming the system which she submitted and gaining through the same episode hundreds of time by doing exactly same thing.
2007
TV.com started to go bit downhill while not anything major incident happened early that year. In mid-2007, the board saw newcomers such as tvfan95 and thesuitelife44 came. It also saw 1st tv.com troll known as im_A_Shark aka WhaleBubber who would try to attempt by fighting/insulting with other users. Otherwise, nothing happened that year.
2008
While this was huge and extremely active at that time. There are quite a lot of even more users such as clapmaster, JellyFishJammer etc. 2008 was the peak of early SB proboard forum such SpongeSeb’s Nicktoons Forums, Television Galaxy, TV.com Party Forum and PokeSpong123’s Boards. There was also trouble with TV.com and changes to its site as well. For instance, TV.com was brought by CBS, the same network that owned by Viacom which also owns all other networks owned by Viacom such as Nickelodeon.
The TV.com users also tried to revive the forum by having party thread first time since 2006 with first being on Aug 24, 2008. It was successful. The users wanted to do more, but until during WhoBob WhatPants premiere event, which it was last time they ever held parties because the TV.com mod starting to act a bit strict with their rules for not having any parties on the board. So, they asked to hold their parties on their blog instead. They also moved all four SpongeBob game threads to TV.com Fun & Games board. This golden era is becoming the beginning of the end.
2009
That year was very interesting year for TV.com. it made something to be more active than ever. In early February, clapmaster created new thread on new & improve forum committee since last one didn’t go well. it also made off-topic thread created by Rock Godness17 which TVTome_Shadow pinned the thread as the users can go off-topic that can be nothing related to SB. On July 1st, 2009, the bizarre incident occurred that bob_ball called out Rock Godness17 because he knew something fishy about the user who was same posting style as NightmareFan_17 (who was also Captain52). Almost everyone was very confused at the time.
The 2009 TV.com SpongeBob Forum Attacks were the series of attacks took place between August 2009 and October 2009. This was also marking the first signs of decline of TV.com forums unlike the latter which 80% of original users were banned. That however was revealed to be Rock Godness17/Nightmare_17 who led the attacks for a revenge after bob_ball exposed to the users.
Decline
In 2010, after the 2009 forum attacks tvfan95 created the topic called “Users Unite!” as he wants tv.com SB board to be active once more. There was bit mixed reaction. Tvguy fought at tvfan that TV.com is dead, and he encouraged everyone to migrate to new SB fansite called The SpongeBob Community. While the other users wanted to stay here despite the 2009 summer incident. However, they all agreed to keep TV.com SB board. Unfortunately, the forum got attacked yet again, but only this time it was WhaleBlubber behind the attack. That cause the death and end of TV.com Golden Era. Many tv.com users move on nor moved to find other SpongeBob fansite such SBC or SBM. In May 2016, TV.com staff announced the TV.com forums will be removed including SpongeBob forum since the forum was a historic part of SBC. MDPP decide an archive for the forums.
Legacy
TV.com Golden Era was the origins of first generation of SBC members that fed up with TV.com wasn’t very safe for the users. The forum has over 186 pages with 20+ threads per pages, 9 pinned topics. In May 2016, the TV.com SpongeBob board is being archive for nostalgia purpose. The era led to creation of The SpongeBob Community that originally for banned refuge members, and it still being one of most active SpongeBob forums since 2009.