IMDb Turns 15

An anonymous reader writes "15 years ago today, Col Needham posted some shell scripts to rec.arts.movies which allowed anyone to search lists of actors, actresses, directors, and biographies. From this humble beginning -- which predates Yahoo, Google, and even the web itself -- the IMDb has wrangled the collective wisdom of millions of submitters to become not only a top 100 website but also a standard Hollywood tool for filmmaking. IMDb is celebrating with a retrospective of the last 15 years of IMDb and movies. Congratulations to IMDb and the internet community that built it."

Comments

What other pre-web services are out there?

[suso]

Its easy to see that the IMDB is one of the oldest if not the oldest internet services (I'm not talking about protocols). And it also predates the web. I was wondering if any of you could name other Internet services that predate the web and still exist today. What constitutes a service is probably difficult because things like IMDB made a move from Usenet to Web which are two very different protocols (although they used them simularly).

DISCLAIMER: Again, i'm not talking about protocols like HTTP, Usenet itself, IRC, etc.

A giant THANKS! to the IMDb people.

[CyricZ]

I just want to say Thanks! to everyone who has contributed to the the IMDb effort. Indeed, time and time again I have found it to be the ultimate resource when it comes to films. The database is always very complete, the summaries and cast lists accurate, and all in all it is a very helpful website.

Many cheers and pip to them all! May they continue to provide such a useful service for years to come.

Reverse Lookup

[Buddy_DoQ]

IMDB has always been there for me when I need to know the name of an actor or crew that contributed to a given film. I can't always recall actor names, and it's always interesting to see what other films the director has made. Sometimes I go in looking for one little tidbit and end up spending hours digging through the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, as it were.

Cheers!