Twenty years ago today, October 17th, 1990, the Internet Movie Database was born! From September 28th, the site created its own anniversary section to celebrate the past two decades of movies and television. They had a daily Star of the Day video where they asked a number of actors, directors, and producers to tell them about their love of movies and why movies inspire them, as well as their IMDb experience — both the good and the bad. For the list-aholic amongst us (who doesn’t love lists, right?), there are all kinds of those under the 20th anniversary list page, where staff list everything from 10 Best Underrated and Forgotten movies in the past 20 years, 20 Years of Movie Trailers, Top 20 movie characters of the past two decades, and a fun list of 10 ‘That Guy From That Thing’ Actors.
The best part for me is learning the history of IMDb—I had no idea it was a UK company based in Bristol—and how it all started as a hobby from a film enthusiast just like me and my fellow movie bloggers! In the letter from Col Needham, founder and CEO of IMDb, he intimated that the site started as
“… 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… 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.”
What’s more amazing was that even five years later, “when the usage had grown so large that we could no longer afford the time to maintain it as a hobby,” the site still hadn’t made any money and all the staff remained volunteers. Apparently it was a certain alien apocalypse Summer blockbuster released in July 1996 that bought their first movie advertising, which made it possible for the staff to become full-time employees! You can visit this page if you want to learn more in-depth history about the site. And guess what, though we use IMDb primarily for research, the folks in Hollywood actually use the vast data as a ‘premier dating vessel’ according to this 2004 article in The Guardian.
And as a movie lover and a huge fan of the site, I want to take the time to offer a small tribute to the motherload of all things movies. After all, blogging about movies would be really challenging without IMDb! 🙂 In fact, even before I started this blog, it’s already been a staple for me. I also owe it to the site for the blog hits and residual traffic I got every time my post made it to their coveted IMDb Hit List. Ever since they picked my Sharlto Copley post back in September 2009, they’ve kindly featured this wee blog eleven times and for each one I am grateful for the opportunity.
So here’s to 20+ more years of success and great things, IMDb! From the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU and CONGRATULATIONS!
Fellow bloggers and readers, do you IMDb (yes I use it as a verb)? Feel free to share your thoughts about the site (regardless of good or bad).
FLIXCHATTER FILM BLOG 
I didn’t love my Android smartphone until it got an official IMDb app. So that should tell you how much I can’t live without IMDb. Can’t even begin to think about what people did 20 years ago without this wonderful database.
Though, have to say, hate their new web layout. But I’ll take the bad with the good.
That reminds me I gotta download that to my Blackberry also.
I actually don’t mind the layout, takes a while to get used to but after a while it’s fine.
It’s amazing that the site has lasted this long, when Amazon bought it back in 1998, if I remember correctly they paid $30mil for it, I thought they might just shut it down or intergrate it into Amazon’s site. Glad they leave it alone and let the site became the one and only movie database in the world.
I had no idea Amazon owned the site until I read the history. WOW, $30 mil? Good for Mr. Needham & co., and yeah I’m glad Amazon left them alone to do what they do best.
Can’t believe it has been 20 years. I don’t think I even started browsing the internet (or had an internet connection) until about 8 years after IMDb started.
I can’t remember when I started using the site. I think it’s at least been 10 yrs when one of my friends look up a movie and I thought, wow look at this wealth of info! Since then I can’t live without it.
Happy birthday to the best database on the interweb! You are absolutely right when you say that blogging about movies without IMDb would be impossible.
Yeah, impossible and whole lot less fun! 🙂
Fascinating post! I particularly like to check it out for seeing the status of an actors current and future work (announced, filming, post-production, etc.) Makes you wonder who all the worker bees are gathering all the info and what THEIR sources are. Happy Birthday IMDb!
Whoever they are, they must be well-connected AND hardworking, which is good for us 🙂
Thanks for letting me know about the ‘Britol’ typo 🙂
I find imdb incredibly useful. When i want to find out what a fav actor or actress is doing(or if i just want to know who they are, like in the case of Isabelle), i always go to imdb first.
One of the most useful sites around
Although unfortunately i haven’t been able to get featured on IMDB yet…but hopefully someday
Keep on blogging, Julian, one day you’ll see your own Dirty with Class on the hit list!
While I absolutely hate what they’ve done with the profile pages as of late, I still use it quite extensively. Enough that every time I visit, I think of signing up for IMDB Pro.
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