Europeangoldfinch.net

Europeangoldfinch.net is a website mentioned in the American television series Prison Break. The real-life domain name was registered by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation on July 31, 2006. The website launched with a brief FAQ on the European Goldfinch as well as a message board with non-editable threads, where the fictional posters discuss the European Goldfinch.

The site was first mentioned in the sixth episode of the show's second season, "Subdivision", which aired on September 25, 2006. During the episode, Michael Scofield (Wentworth Miller) tells Fernando Sucre (Amaury Nolasco) AbOUT the site, which they can use to communicate. Eleven episodes later, in "Wash", Benjamin Miles "C-Note" Franklin (Rockmond Dunbar) uses the website as part of a deal with F.B.I. Special Agent Alexander Mahone (William Fichtner).

Connection with the television series

In a thread on the website's forum entitled "US Southwest Sighting???", a poster named "FISH 40" posts a message that reads, "Bolshoi Booze 6/4". In the show, a "fish" is a new prisoner at Fox River, while "40" refers to the number of Michael Scofield's cell. The phrase "Bolshoi Booze" became an important part of the plot in episode "Bolshoi Booze". The post was made prior to the broadcast of the episode. Moreover, "6/4" refers to the date June 4th.

After the episode "Bad Blood" was aired, a post by "C-Finch69" was put on the site. It also correlates to C-Note's storyline in "Wash" where he attempts to lure Michael to Agent Mahone. The message reads:

Fish: My daughter's sick. I need help.
Any word on the money? --C.

Michael replies with the message, "C: Bag has the money. Sorry to hear about your daughter. Good luck."

Mahone later uses the website, pretending to be Sucre, to inform Michael that T-Bag is in Panama City as part of a sting operation with T-Bag himself in "Panama".

European Gold Finches are also primarily kept and bred in captivity around the world because of their distinctive appearance and pleasant song. In earlier times, the Goldfinch was kept as a cagebird for its song. Because of their deliberate escapes from captivity and they have colonized southeastern Australia and New Zealand. This bird symbolism is used to represent the Fox River escapees.

Mistakes according to the show

Two threads of messages, which appeared directly after the launch of the website, were dated incorrectly when compared to the timeline of the episodes. The first message made by a poster named "Fish40" was dated in March. Since "Fish40" is referring to the series protagonist, Michael Scofield, a discrepancy arose as the protagonist would not have known that he would be placed in cell 40 until he was incarcerated, which took place in April in the series pilot. The date of the post was later changed to "5/31" - May 31st. In addition to this, a post by KVFinchlover7475 was also put on the website in a thread titled "EGF site update!". The poster explains: "As some of you may have noticed, the dates on the site have been a little wonky.

In "Panama", Michael's cell phone displayed "I'm in. Let me know when you get there.", with Michael's name at the end of the post, which the post on the website does not have.

Web traffic

Traffic to this website is an example of media meshing, a phenomenon where consumers of one media form, such as television, enrich their own experience by engaging additional media forms, such as a website or a blog. Although only a measure of a portion of internet traffic, the Alexa traffic ranking service shows several prominent spikes in number of visitors to the site. The first is in the 4th week of September 2006, close to the air date for the first episode that mentioned the site. The second major spike, in the third week of February 2007, coincides with the airdate for the second episode in which the site was featured. At peak traffic, between 0.005% and 0.02% of all Alexa subscribers using the internet on a given day visited the site. (See current graph at traffic.alexa.com)

The site

Although on the show the site appears to work well on a BlackBerry PDA the actual site does not appear to have been optimized for mobile devices. All post are actually on one Big Page and browsing is handled via javascript by hiding parts of the site, a user with javascript disabled would not be able to get past the main list. User KVFinchlover7475 claims to have difficulty in writing HTML this can be said to be true as the entire source code is warped in a table as well as a few other minor mistakes in the code, on the other hand the javascript part is fairly complex but it to has a couple of mistakes, theres also appears a message about an SSI error, but this seams to have been put there deliberately. Probably as an explanation as to why it is not possible to register or post on the forum. Visiting users will be tracked by both fox.com and quantserve.com.

fr:Interactivité dans Prison Break nl:Europeangoldfinch.net pl:Europeangoldfinch.net tr:Europeangoldfinch.net