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IMDb Hits 25

Posted by timothy on from the 5-stars-down-the-line dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The year 2015 heralded a number of notable Internet milestones — the humble .com domain name reached 30 years of age, while both eBay and Amazon reached the grand old age of 20. That the Internet Movie Database, a gargantuan film and TV show encyclopedia better known as IMDb, began 25 years ago as a pre-Web hobby project and is now one of the top 50 most visited websites on the Internet is a notable achievement. "IMDb is the only pure Internet company that can celebrate its 25th anniversary," said Col Needham, founder and CEO of IMDb, in an interview with VentureBeat.

11 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. Pure Internet Company? by great+throwdini · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not sure what the definition of 'pure Internet company' might be in this context, but IMDb has been owned outright by Amazon since the late '90s, so at best, it's a 'pure Internet subsidiary' ...

    1. Re:Pure Internet Company? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I remember when I first encountered IMDb. Downloaded it from aminet.
      It was fun playing around with a reasonably large dataset, picking out movies the same two actors had been on and such.
      The webpage, is much less fun, but it seems like you can still download the data from http://www.imdb.com/interfaces
      It claims to be a subset but doesn't specify what is missing.

    2. Re:Pure Internet Company? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My own take on IMDB is that it's the internet poster-child for "commercial exploitation of user generated content". It's an identical model to Slashdot, though I bet Amazon makes a shit load more money from IMDB than Dice do from here.

      I think the main problem is the sense of scale (volume of visitors) is lost on most people. That, and determining how much money a website makes is pretty difficult for experts, and impossible for a regular web user to do.

      The reason the deceit is so strong, is that it's a similar experience to giving money to a homeless person on the street. Most people "feel good" about this, yet if they discovered later that the guy actually lived in a nice house and simply went out on the street to make money, they would be upset and pissed off.

      Same with IMDB and other websites based on user driven content. When people go there and contribute, they think they're doing something good and helping other visitors like them. They think they're being "nice" and to some extent they are, so many would claim that it's a win-win for contributors. Yet if they later discover that the website generated $X millions for it's owners, then I think (and rightly so) most contributors would be pissed. Why do we tolerate these parasites?

      It's exploitation and its dishonest, which is why community sites really need to be owned and run by their contributors. Compared to 20 years ago a successful website (millions of visitors a day) can be now run on easily accessible hardware. Hosting costs simply aren't that high any more. I am mentioning this because a common phrase thrown around online is "hosting isn't free" and "we need them [the owners] to run the site". This "woe is us" mentality in support of the site owners is just a corporate pity smokescreen to play down the value of the revenue generated by the site. Community hosting does not need to be expensive, and does not need the guaranteed up-time of the commerical interests.

      In closing, I'm simply advising you to think carefully about where and how you contribute online. Your efforts (my own post here included) will not be rewarded, while at the same time the website owner is making actual cold hard cash. All other "rewards" such as "reputation", "karma", and so on, are just ego stroking distractions and ultimately pointless. As for most experiences in life, to ignore the ego is to be truly free.

      ---
      Not APK

    3. Re: Pure Internet Company? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2

      Most of the data is just facts. They aren't copyrightable. Database rights might apply to the aggregation, but they're most likely owned by the aggregator (IMDB).

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Happy birthday by evilviper · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Happy birthday IMDB! You've done more than any other site on the internet to convince me of the necessity of ad-blocking! Those HUGE banners above everything else, especially when they are the last thing to load and make the page move while I'm trying to click on the search bar but instead get taken elsewhere. The nice blurring of the line between just listing what's new, and giving huge extra amounts of intrusive space to movies that are paying you for clicks... And let's not even get started on locking-up content behind a paid service that was previously freely available (and still available on other sites). Or the Yahoo/Amazon-esque cramming more crap into every page, or spreading the content across dozens more pages, so that it takes 4 extra clicks to look-up the basic info nearly everybody visiting your site is looking for...

    No other site makes me curse for needing to use it like you do, IMDB. So happy birthday...

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    1. Re:Happy birthday by justthinkit · · Score: 4, Informative

      Pretty good rant, but one clarif -- you can make the "main details" page much bigger, by default, so that you don't have to click anything to find out who all was in and made the movie. Just a preference setting away, and it sticks like cookie dough.

      As to ads, I really had no idea IMDB had ads...

      --
      I come here for the love
  3. Is it just the website? by Snotnose · · Score: 2

    I seem to remember IMDb started on Usenet in the 80s.

  4. Re:Impressive but not unique by greenwow · · Score: 5, Informative

    It was online. It started on Usenet.

  5. Re:Impressive but not unique by illtud · · Score: 2

    It certainly was online for whatever value of 'online' you'd choose to use. Obviously it wasn't on the web in 1990, as that hadn't started yet, but the web is a subset of the Internet. I was an avid user of rec.arts.movies db. When I accessed the very few websites available in early 1994 as a student at Cardiff University, the 'Cardiff Internet Movie Database' was there. I borrowed a copy of 'Clockwork Orange' on VHS (then still banned in the UK) via CIMB. Even then I was impressed that this obviously International resource was served out of the machine room downstairs.

  6. Re:Impressive but not unique by KGIII · · Score: 2

    Err... Define "online" for me, if you will... (I've only been "online" since 1985 or so, help me out.)

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  7. Re:More Disenchanted, still use it by bobstreo · · Score: 2

    I can't speak for the A-list actors. Just for everyone else listed on IMDB. All of those pictures are uploaded by the person listed or an agent of that person. I have a profile as a lowly Grip. You can't add a picture unless you are an IMDB pro paid user. At least not that i have found yet.

    http://www.imdb.com/name/nm689...

    So grips don't have agents? (Just kidding)

    I thought it would be something like that, agents need their booty. A-listers can probably afford it. and you wouldn't want to get into
    legal trouble by just pasting any old picture in there.

    I do dislike the watermarked images though.