Amid criticism, IMDb founder Colonel Needham steps down as CEO after 35 years

The founder of IMDb has stepped down as CEO nearly 35 years after launching the online entertainment information database. Colonel Needham will succeed Nikki Santoro, who has served as IMDb’s Chief Operating Officer since 2021. diverse previously I mentioned News.

IMDb has been criticized by film and TV buffs over the years for, among other things, Its message board community solutionand launched site redesigns that they felt were unnecessary and made navigating the site more difficult. Amazon bought IMDb in 1998, and the company claims to have more than 250 million monthly users. Despite the complaints, this is still probably the best place to find accurate and up-to-date information about the casting and in-depth cinematography of individual actors.

In recent years the company has tried to keep up with the times and launch new products – Amazon’s much-regarded X-Ray feature on its streaming service Prime Video can show which actors appear at any moment in a movie or TV show, and is backed by the IMDb database. IMDb has also launched a free, ad-supported streaming service of its own called IMDb TV, though Discontinued in late 2024 And the free content has been rolled out to Prime Video (it can still be accessed without paying).

Besides serving as a database of information, IMDb also has reviews and ratings, which over the years have suffered from decline. Review bombing Users attempt to manipulate the outcome of a new release based on an agenda, such as targeting an actor they consider “woke.” Meanwhile, the reviews are often more entertaining than helpful, with one horse movie user writing something along the lines of “I hate movies about horses, 1/10 stars.”

The sad truth about IMDB is that it seems like a case of a website that has hit a sweet spot and doesn’t need much improvement. However, managers and employees want to keep their jobs, and they have to meet investors’ growth expectations, which means they need to keep busy adding new features. No one wants to tell their boss that the job is finished and there is no more work to do. This ultimately leads to a product that is bloated with features that users don’t really need while cluttering the entire product. Craigslist is a good example of a website that knows when to go into maintenance mode, and it remains very popular to this day.

Perhaps a better way to run IMDb would be to look to its parent company. Amazon.com’s user interface has changed very slightly over the years. When you create a new feature like Prime Video, the company isolates it within its own tab. It is not a core feature that is forced on users.

The perpetual nature of IMDb shows how difficult it is to crack down on a website that reaches critical mass to solve a need and solve it well. Sites like Yahoo! X and X remain large properties despite years of mismanagement and chaos, for example.

Letterboxd contains Gain steam slowly As a strong competitor to IMDb, although it still looks much smaller.

Needham said IMDb grew out of a personal movie database he created as a teenager, as well as similar data he collected online starting in the late 1980s.