A Letter from Our Founder, Col Needham
October 17, 2010
So here we are on the occasion of IMDb's 20th anniversary. First and foremost I would like to thank the contributors and visitors to IMDb who share our love of movies, TV, and celebrities, and have given so much to us. We would not be here today without you. Second, I'd like to thank the mentors, investors, volunteers, employees, supporters, and even detractors who inspire us to do better.
It was 20 years ago today that I posted a simple software package to the USENET newsgroup rec.arts.movies, which allowed readers of that group to create and search a very basic movie and TV database. This was the 17th October 1990. The database was built from the lists of credits which I and two other readers had begun to publish in the same group. At the time the database only covered actors, actresses, and directors. The World Wide Web was a long way off and anyone wanting to use the database had to install it locally on their computer. IMDb was born though and anyone reading the group on that day could have access to the Internet's first freely-available movie and TV database.
There was no grand business plan. In fact, there was no commercial use of the Internet back in those days at all. We were just a bunch of volunteer enthusiasts who wanted to share our love of TV and movies with other people and to create something interesting. My passion for film preceded even our USENET group. I had kept a personal film diary in a database since the time I was a teenager. In the evening of the day IMDb was born I watched, Body Heat (1981) and I am going to re-watch it tonight with my wife in honour of the occasion, and also think about whether it's okay for my 17-year-old daughters to see it too. It could be slightly embarrassing.
Over the ensuing years we recruited volunteer experts around the world to manage additional sections, covering other aspects of film and TV. It was not long before we had sections dedicated to writers, composers and cinematographers (the latter two managed by long-time employee Michel Hafner). Many more sections followed over the next few years. Then, in 1993, Rob Hartill, a Phd. student at Cardiff University in Wales, joined the team and wrote a wrapper around the software to create the first IMDb web site. As I recall we were among the very first sites to use the newly launched HTML "form" tag; we have always tried to be at the forefront of technology ever since, no matter how big or (in that case) how small.
By 1995 IMDb usage had grown so large that we could no longer afford the time to maintain it as a hobby. The 20 or so volunteers back in those days agonised for months over the decision to switch to a commercial operation and wondered if we could even sell any advertising to fund such a proposition. We switched in early 1996 and incorporated as a UK company. We did not have any revenue and so we all still remained volunteers. We bought our first server on a credit card and US team member Ron Higgins managed to negotiate free placement of that server at a nearby ISP in exchange for us advertising their services on our home page. The week we launched as a commercial service, our UK system manager, Jake Dias, put an operating system on a 4Gb disk-drive and Rob added a web server, the IMDb software, and the IMDb data, then we shipped it overnight to Ron for installation. Four users complained about this switch but the rest could immediately see an improvement in the speed and service offered on http://www.imdb.com/. Within a couple of weeks we were fortunate to sell our first piece of advertising (paying off the credit card before it was due) and by July 1996 sold our first movie advertising to Fox for Independence Day (1996) which was the signal for me to switch to being our first full-time employee. The rest of the team mostly became full-time employees as our revenues grew and we could afford to fund their salaries.
In 1998 we became part of the Amazon.com group of companies. IMDb still exists today as a separate entity within that group and yet also works very closely with Amazon, sharing access to great people, advisors, and technology. IMDb team member Murray Chapman made an extremely bold move and volunteered to move continents, from Australia to Seattle, to be our ambassador to Amazon in those early post-acquisition days. Murray is still part of a team (a much larger team) collocated in Seattle. It's an honour and privilege to work for Jeff Bezos and the people at Amazon. It's also an honour to still be here and help our users find great movies and TV shows to watch or to help you learn about them and appreciate them more afterwards. It's been an amazing journey over 20 years from a few thousand titles to over 1.6 million today (http://www.imdb.com/stats). It is also great to help in the production of movies and TV via IMDb Pro and our subsidiaries Withoutabox and BoxOfficeMojo. While maintaining our independence we have tried to help the movie and TV industry make connections, improve their business, and even lend a helping hand or two.
We found this anniversary video from Eli Roth particularly inspiring:
http://www.imdb.com/features/anniversary/2010/countdown/day17
I could write much more but instead let's cover some of the more recent years via a selected news article about IMDb for every other year from 2004 to 2010:
2004 - http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2004/nov/06/internet.culture
2006 - http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/29/technology/29iht-IMDB.1839178.html
2008 - http://www.totalfilm.com/features/the-story-of-the-imdb
2010 - http://www.latimes.com/business/fi-ct-facetime-20101014a,0,4243587.story
As proud as we are of our past, we are even more excited for our future. IMDb is now used by over 100 million unique users worldwide each month. This year we have made IMDb available on mobile devices with iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows Phone 7 applications, along with our mobile friendly site at http://m.imdb.com/. On the main web site we have launched many features including: Facebook shares & likes; HD trailers; user lists; and we redesigned our home, name and title pages. The best part is, we've only just begun. Hardly a day goes by without a new feature or an enhancement going live and that's all part of the excitement of working here (we are recruiting too, see http://www.imdb.com/jobs). Each week we add thousands of new pieces of content from titles/names (and associated data), user reviews, clips, trailers, full length videos, photos and news articles.
In addition to the amazing IMDb team and our users and data contributors, I would like to dedicate this note to some special people who have helped me personally along the way: Karen, Beth, Kate, Val, Gladys & Herbert, Chris & Julie, Jeff & MacKenzie, Murray & Heidi and Ian. It's still Day One, as one of you would say, so onwards to the next 20 years!
Col Needham
Founder & CEO
http://www.imdb.com/
"Well, yes, ma'am, I do... I mean, I got everything I need right here with me. I got air in my lungs, a few blank sheets of paper. I mean, I love waking up in the morning not knowing what's gonna happen or, who I'm gonna meet, where I'm gonna wind up. Just the other night I was sleeping under a bridge and now here I am on the grandest ship in the world having champagne with you fine people. I figure life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You don't know what hand you're gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you... to make each day count." -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120338/quotes?qt0472121
company.