IMDb facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
IMDb

Logo used since 2016
Screenshot  Homepage as of March 2021
Type of site	Database
Available in	English
Owner	Amazon
Founder(s)	Col Needham
Subsidiaries	Box Office Mojo
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Optional
Launched	1990; 35 years ago (1990)
Current status	Active
Content license	Proprietary

IMDb stands for the Internet Movie Database. It's a huge online collection of information about movies, TV shows, podcasts, video games, and online videos. You can find details about actors, directors, movie crews, plot summaries, fun facts, and even ratings and reviews from fans and critics.

IMDb started in 1990 as a fan project on an online discussion group called "rec.arts.movies." It moved to the internet (the Web) in 1993. Since 1998, a company called IMDb.com, Inc., which is part of Amazon, has owned and run it.

The website used to have message boards where users could chat, but these were removed in February 2017.

As of 2019, IMDb was one of the most popular websites in the world. By March 2022, it had over 10 million titles (including TV episodes) and more than 11 million records for people working in entertainment. It also had 83 million registered users!

What can you do on IMDb?

You can look at pages for movies, TV shows, and people on IMDb without signing in. But if you want to add new information or suggest changes, you need to register and log in. Most of the information on the site comes from these helpful volunteers!

Registered users who have a good history of contributions can add or fix things like cast lists and credits. However, adding or removing pictures, or changing names and plot summaries, needs to be approved by IMDb staff. This usually takes about 1 to 3 days.

In 2007, IMDb added character filmographies. This means you can see a list of all the movies and shows a specific character has appeared in.

How do users contribute?

When you register, you can choose a username. Most users use a made-up name. You can't easily see who contributed what to each movie or person's page, except for plot summaries and biographies.

Users can also rate movies and shows from 1 to 10. IMDb uses a special system to combine these ratings into an average score for each title. This system tries to prevent people from unfairly giving very high or very low scores.

Your user profile page shows when you registered and, if you choose, the ratings you've given to titles. Since 2015, you can also see "badges" that show how many contributions you've made in different areas, like photos or fun facts. If you work in the entertainment industry and have an IMDb page, you can add photos through IMDbPro.

How are movies ranked?

IMDb has a famous "Top 250" list of the highest-rated movies. This list is based on ratings from regular users. As of September 2023, The Shawshank Redemption has been number one on this list since 2008.

IMDb keeps secret how many votes a user needs to be considered a "regular voter." They say this helps keep the list fair. The Top 250 list uses a special formula to calculate ratings, which makes the rating more reliable if more people vote.

The original formula IMDb used was: Where:

• W is the final weighted rating.
• R is the average rating for the movie (from 1 to 10).
• v is the number of votes the movie has received.
• m is the minimum number of votes needed to be on the Top 250 list (it was 25,000 in 2013).
• C is the average rating across all movies (it was 7.0 in 2013).

IMDb also has a "Bottom 100" list for the lowest-rated movies, which uses a similar process but requires fewer votes (10,000).

The Top 250 list includes many different types of movies, like big blockbusters, independent films, and movies from other countries. Documentaries, short films, and TV episodes are not usually included. Since 2015, there's also a separate Top 250 list just for TV shows.

What is IMDbPro?

IMDbPro is a special paid service for people in the entertainment industry, like actors, crew members, and executives. For a yearly fee, members can post their resumes, upload photos, and see contact information for agents. They can also claim their own IMDb page or pages for their production companies. IMDbPro members have more access and special features compared to regular users.

How did IMDb start?

The beginning (before the website)

IMDb began in 1990 with an online post by Col Needham, a film fan and computer programmer from England. He posted a list called "Those Eyes" about actresses with beautiful eyes. Other people joined in, adding their own lists of actors and directors.

Soon, these lists grew to include almost 10,000 movies and TV shows, with details about the actors and actresses in them. On October 17, 1990, Col Needham created computer programs that could search these lists. This was the start of the database that would become IMDb. Back then, it was known as the "rec.arts.movies movie database."

Moving to the internet

The database quickly grew to include more information, like details about filmmakers, fun facts, biographies, and plot summaries. In 1993, it moved to the new World Wide Web and was called Cardiff Internet Movie Database. It was hosted on computers at Cardiff University in Wales.

Over the next few years, the database was run on many different computers around the world, with people donating their internet bandwidth to keep it going.

Becoming a company

In 1996, IMDb became a company in the United Kingdom, called Internet Movie Database Ltd. Col Needham became the main owner. The company made money from advertising and partnerships.

Joining Amazon.com (1998–present)

In 1998, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, bought IMDb. Amazon paid $55 million for IMDb and two other companies. IMDb became a private company under Amazon. Amazon wanted to use IMDb to help sell DVDs and videotapes.

IMDb kept adding new features. In 2002, it launched IMDbPro, the subscription service for entertainment professionals.

Every year, Col Needham sends an email newsletter to people who contribute to IMDb. This newsletter shares statistics, lists the top contributors, and talks about the site's progress. As a thank you, the top contributors each year receive free access to IMDbPro.

In 2008, IMDb launched its first official version in another language, IMDb.de, which is in German. Also in 2008, IMDb bought two other companies: Withoutabox and Box Office Mojo.

In January 2019, IMDb launched a free streaming service called Freedive, which showed movies and TV shows with ads. In June 2019, it was renamed IMDb TV. In April 2022, the service was rebranded again as Amazon Freevee.

How IMDb gets and shows information

Information from professionals

Since 2006, actors and crew members can pay a yearly fee to post their resumes and upload photos on IMDb. These pages are linked to their main IMDb entry. This service is now part of an IMDbPro subscription.

How data is stored and accessed

IMDb doesn't have a simple way for other computer programs to automatically get information from it. However, most of the data can be downloaded as compressed text files. There are also tools and programs that can help you search and display this information.

Movie titles in different languages

IMDb has websites in English and also in other languages like Danish, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The non-English sites show movie titles in their local language. On the English sites, users can choose to see titles either in their original language or as they were released in the US or UK.

Podcasts on IMDb

In October 2021, IMDb started allowing podcasts (both series and individual episodes) to be added to the site. As of December 2022, there were over 24,000 podcast series and more than 3 million podcast episodes listed on IMDb.

Statistics

As of December 2022, IMDb tracked many different types of titles:

See also

In Spanish: Internet Movie Database para niños

• List of online databases
• Goodreads
• Letterboxd
• Rotten Tomatoes