

Startup Idea n+1: Fix IMDB. - rokhayakebe

IMDB is in need of a truly better interface and we all know they won't change a thing. The search feature is not all that great either, in  fact it sucks. By the way finding a good movie online and its related information is very very painful.
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nostrademons
This is totally true, but IMDB has some serious network effects that you'd
need to overcome. Their biggest asset is the _huge_ database they've already
built up; any competitor would need to recreate that. And they build it from
user contributions: users already go to IMDB, so for a startup to rebuild it,
they'd need to attract those users, which requires offering better content
than IMDB. Catch-22.

It's much like E-bay: everybody knows they suck, everyone wants a competitor,
but the network effects are so huge that a frontal assault is doomed to fail.

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marketer
But their data is freely available:

<http://www.imdb.com/interfaces>

It probably wouldn't be a good idea, without massive amounts of resources (i.e
Jason-Calacanis-mahalo-style), to try to recreate the data. Creating mashups
with their data seems more reasonable. But can you build a startup out of it?

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wmf
Although the data is available for download, it says in several places that
it's not free. Apparently you need to negotiate a license.

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s3graham
This is normally good enough for me: (most ppl?)

[http://www.google.ca/movies/reviews?cid=b1bbc12bd62930eb&...](http://www.google.ca/movies/reviews?cid=b1bbc12bd62930eb&hl=en&fq=the+dark+knight&sa=X&oi=showtimes&ct=reviews&cd=1)

Anything specific you're really dying for?

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Tichy
IMDB definitely sucks - actually I was sure that the herd had already moved on
to something better, and was only too lazy too look around for it yet.

What are most people using these days? Steve Jobs showed "rotten tomatoes" in
his iTunes-Video presentation, maybe that is where everybody is heading these
days?

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zacharye
I still use IMDB but only for "who was that guy in that movie" situations.
Don't really use anything for movie recommendations. Blockbuster.com gives
horrible recs (I use their total access service) and I haven't found anything
else worth mentioning. Seems like an accessible space if there are a lot of
marketing dollars at hand.

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rms
At least The Dark Knight isn't the #1 movie anymore...

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rokhayakebe
Now, hold on. That was a great movie and deserved its place :)

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Giorgi
Our group has already submitted something like that... let's see...

