Today is the 18th Birthday of the Internet Movie Database. Some of you might be wondering how it is possible for IMDb to be 18 years old when the first web browser wasn’t available until 1991. For that we go to IMDb founder and managing director Col Needham to explain:
On this day in 1990 I published a series of scripts which made lists of credits (collected by a wonderful USENET group called “rec.arts.movies”) searchable. Though the naming was still four years off, the IMDb was, in essence, born. Suffice it to say, however, that since that time IMDb has become more than a list of searchable credits. On top of this bedrock of data we’ve recently added 6,000 full-length feature films and TV episodes which our users can watch for free. We have launched NewsDesk, (which allows news partners to add their news feeds to our site), individual pages for characters, plot synopses, FAQs, parental guides, and many, many more features. We now enjoy the patronage of over 57 million movie and TV lovers each month.
As inaccurate as it can be at times, I don’t know what I would do without IMDB.com. I can barely remember back to the days before I learned about the movie database. You would be forced to visit the local video rental store, or call your movie-trivia-obsessed friend (I think everyone use to have one of these guys) if you wanted to know who starred in a certain film from years past. I think we all take for granted the wonderful resource we now have at the tip of our fingertips (and I mean fingerprints, I’m on IMDb all the time on my iPhone). Congratulations to the entire IMDb team for the milestone.
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