IMDb
IMDb Home Page in 2007
URL
www.imdb.com
Commercial?
Yes
Type of site
Online movie, TV, and video game database
Registration
Optional
Available language(s)
English
Owner
Amazon.com
Created by
Col Needham
Launched
October 17, 1990
Current status
Active
The Internet Movie Database Ltd, with Col Needham and other principal shareholders, to buy IMDb outright and attach it to his corporate empire as a subsidiary, private company.[4] This gave IMDb the ability to pay the shareholders salaries for their work, while Amazon.com would be able to use the IMDb as an advertising resource for selling DVDs and videotapes. Volunteer contributors were not advised in advance of even the possibility of IMDb - and their contributions along with it - being sold to a private business, which created some initial discord and defection of regulars.
IMDb continues to expand its functionality. In 2002, it added a subscription service known as IMDbPro aimed at entertainment professionals. It provides a variety of services including production and box office details, as well as trivia, biographies, and plot summaries; the movie ratings had been properly integrated with the list data; and a centralized email interface for querying the database had been created. Later in the year, it moved onto to the World Wide Web (a network in its infancy back then) under the name of Cardiff Internet Movie Database. The database resided on the servers of the computer science department of Cardiff University in Wales. Rob Hartill was the original web interface author. In 1994, the email interface was revised to accept the submission of all information, meaning that people no longer had to email the specific list maintainer with their updates. However, the structure remained that information received on a single film was divided among multiple section managers, the sections being defined and determined by categories of film personnel and the individual filmographies contained therein. Its management
