Imdb.com Biography & Web Analysis

IMDb is an online database of information related with films, TV programs, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. An extra fan feature, message boards, was abandoned in February 2017. Initially a fan-operated site, the database is currently owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon. 

IMDb began with a Usenet posting named "Those Eyes", by the British film fan and computer programmer Col Needham, about actresses with beautiful eyes. Others with similar interests soon responded with additions or different arrangements of their own. Needham hence began an "Actors List", while Dave Knight started a "Directors List", and Andy Krieg took control over "THE LIST" from Hank Driskill, which would later be renamed the "Actress List". 

The two lists had been restricted to people who were alive and working, however retired people were added, so Needham began what was at that point (but did not remain) a separate "Dead Actors/Actresses List". Steve Hammond began collecting and merging character names for both the actors and actresses lists. At the point when these achieved popularity, they were merged back into the lists themselves. The goal of the members now was to make the lists as inclusive as could really be expected. 

By late 1990, the lists included just about 10,000 movies and TV series, corresponded with actors and actresses showing up in that. On October 17, 1990, Needham created and posted a collection of Unix shell contents that could be used to search through the four lists, and in this way the database that would become the IMDb was born. At the time, it was known as the "rec.arts.movies film database". 

As of December 2020, IMDb has roughly 7.5 million titles (including episodes) and 10.4 million characters in its database, just as 83 million registered users. IMDb started as a movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990 and moved to the web in 1993.