

Revealed: The guy behind IMDb - pielud
http://www.alexandrosmaragos.com/2010/12/guy-who-runs-imdb.html

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dholowiski
6 years as a hobby, and another two as a business. 8 years before he sold to
Amazon. Remember that the next time you're complaining that you aren't making
any money 30 days after launching a site.

~~~
executive
IMDb didn't magically start making money when they sold to Amazon.

~~~
gvb
No, but Colin Needham did.

~~~
executive
You seem to be forgetting pre-Amazon ad revenue.

~~~
visakhcr
There was no Google Adsense before 1998.

(Other ad players were there, but nothing as efficient and accessible to any
website owner/publisher)

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lmz
Sources / Words / Images from the Daily Mail article[1]? Why not just submit
the Mail article? Is this wholesale lifting of content even allowed?

[1]:
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1342663/IMDb-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1342663/IMDb-
run-self-confessed-geek-Colin-Needham-house-Bristol.html)

~~~
pielud
Oops. Somehow missed that link at the bottom.

~~~
ldite
Even sourcier: <http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?history>

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bcl
IMDB has become so ad and video ridden over the years that I've stopped using
it for the most part. Their recent redesign of the detail pages has made it
even less useful. There is a open project at <http://tmdb.org> which is more
like what imdb used to be, and it has an API allowing you to integrate it into
your own projects.

~~~
haribilalic
The official iPhone and iPad applications are nice though. My biggest use of
IMDb is while I am watching TV or movies and it's more likely I'll have my
phone or iPad than my laptop.

<http://thetvdb.com/> is another open project (the data is CC and the software
is GPL) that's used by XBMC, Plex and others. It's aimed at software, not
people, but it's good for episode listings.

~~~
rhizome
Yes, and the iPhone version is better than the Android one. The search field
is always there and it remembers your history. The Android app defaults to
some adlike "BLOCKBUSTERS THIS WEEK" list that gives me that "I'm afraid to
click on anything" feeling and you have to go to the menu in order to search,
which is a button press and a screen tap minimum.

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wallflower
I have to contrast IMDB with CDDB a.k.a. Gracenote. The CDDB guy is popularly
held to have screwed over the contributions of thousands of dedicated users
when they made their crowd-sourced database proprietary and commercial. Some
people I know obsessively catalogued their entire collections, in the spirit
of community knowledge, sharing. You have to at least consider that this was
Steven Scherf's plan from the beginning, from when it was one of the first, if
not the first, popular crowd-sourced sites.

<http://www.quora.com/How-did-CDDB-become-Gracenote>

~~~
cddbguy
I am that "CDDB guy" you refer to. Note that there were a number of us
involved, and I can't tell you how far from our minds any of this was. Think
what you like, but perhaps a little reading first:

<http://link.moonsoft.com/wired.html>

[http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listenin...](http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2006/11/72105?currentPage=all)

And yes, most lawyers are sociopaths :), but they are a necessary evil
sometimes.

~~~
cddbguy
Sorry, that last line was for @zandorg.

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inovica
This is a classic case of where the guy followed his passion/dream. He wasn't
in it for the money but wanted to create the best site (actually database at
first) for movies and ultimately was rewarded by Amazon buying it. Shows how
passionate he is that he's still there

~~~
aw3c2
It also shows that money is not needed for even the most amazing services or
projects. (Yes, apart from running costs, though I am sure he paid for those
out of his own pocket in the beginning because he felt like it.)

People sometimes get angry at others who live without wanting to pay for this
and that. For example music. If people stop paying for money and that industry
fails, so be it. Others make music in their free time because it is their
hobby and passion.

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sjs
[off-topic]

Seriously? _x-small_?! No matter how pretty you think your site looks if
people can't read the fucking text it doesn't matter. On top of that the
contrast is terrible making it even worse.

    
    
        font: x-small "Trebuchet MS", Trebuchet, Verdana, Sans-serif;
        font-size/* */:/**/small;
        font-size: /**/small;
    

Sorry for the tangent I'm just tired of having to bump up the font size 2-5
times on every damn site I visit. And now I feel old. Shit.

(If you reply mentioning readability I will punch you :p Readability is not a
cure-all and messes up some pages)

~~~
nkurz
I don't want to stand in the way of a good rant, but if you have to hold down
on the plus key for on every site, perhaps you should increase your default
font size? Or perhaps something is wrong with your DPI settings? Or perhaps a
larger monitor? With the Linux and OSX setups I use, I have no trouble reading
this particular site, and rarely find that I have to increase font sizes.

~~~
sjs
_(Excuse my ranting, could just be crankiness due to a lack of sleep caused by
a 7am flight)_

My default font size is 16pt and that should be enough imo, but x-small
applied to 16pt is still small. My display does have a relatively high DPI at
~130, but that's why I bump up my default font size. :/ I just bumped it to
18pt for good measure.

Despite the joke about feeling old I'm only 28 and have good enough vision w/
my contacts in.

Regardless of my DPI and/or default font size, there is absolutely no good
reason to use x-small on a site whose sole purpose is to display articles for
people to read. That is pure lunacy if you ask me.

~~~
rhizome
Overconfigured for sure.

~~~
sjs
Because I changed my default font size? If you say so...

~~~
rhizome
No, for using x-small for display text.

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jasongullickson
Let me just say that as an indie filmmaker, dealing with IMDB sucks. The
submission and update process is terribly confusing and the criteria for what
films (and attributes) are acceptable makes Apples App Store rules seem clear
and open.

I was very pleased to find several alternatives listed in this thread, thank-
you!

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StavrosK
So it's one guy? Where does he get the data? What happens to all the IMDb Pro
subscription money? Does he really run it all alone?

~~~
michael_dorfman
The answers to all of these questions are in the linked article.

But, just to save you the bother:

a) one guy started it, but it is not a one-man show, nor has it ever really
been b) the data was sourced (Wikipedia-style, you might say) on Usenet, back
in the pre-WWW days. Since then, the number of sources has multiplied. c) it
goes to Amazon, who bought the IMDB back in '98. d) Of course not. He's a VP
at Amazon. There is a staff (of unspecified size) working on IMDB.

~~~
pyre
You're forgetting the outcry there was for taking the USENET posts into a
closed system. Similar to what happened with CDDB:

1\. get users to submit a bunch of content to you in an open system for free

2\. close the system and claim ownership of the database that your users
helped create

3\. profit!

