Employee
•
500 Messages
•
42.2K Points
IMDb Top 250 Data Contributors for 2014
Included below is IMDb's founder and CEO Col Needham's end-of-year message to IMDb's top 250 data contributors for 2014.
Thanks again to the top 250 and also to everyone who contributed to IMDb last year -- every data contribution helps! If anyone outside of the top 250 would like to know their 2014 (only) live item total and position in the complete list, please post a reply here and, for a limited time, we will try to let you know as long as you have submitted more than 200 live items.
Happy New Year from IMDb!
Col
Introduction and Thanks
Welcome to the 20th edition of our end-of-year message to IMDb's top data contributors as we head into 2015 during which we will celebrate our 25th anniversary. We are looking forward to an interesting year with many improvements planned. If this is your first year then welcome to the list. It is also good to see many familiar names, and a quick scan shows that Kurt Wallsten is the only person to have been included in every edition. Special thanks Kurt.
This message is being sent to the 250 most prolific contributors in 2014. It will also be shared widely such that everyone can appreciate your efforts.
We would first like to extend a massive thank you for all your data contributions in 2014 on behalf of the IMDb staff and our (now) 200+ million monthly visitors.
For a review of progress over the years, all 20 issues of this message will be available at:
http://www.imdb.com/czone/top_msg
The Numbers
The table at the end of this message shows the number of approved, non-duplicate data items (including deletions / corrections) which you have contributed in 2014 and your position within the top 250 contributors.
In total there are now over 180 million items in the IMDb database, collected since our launch in 1990. Some highlights from the 2014 numbers:
* over 3.1 million titles with over 400,000 added in 2014
* over 6.2 million names with over 700,000 added in 2014
* over 63 million filmography credits with over 7.5 million added in 2014
* over 475,000 companies with over 40,000 added in 2014
* over 3,000 events with over 1,000 added in 2014
More statistics are available at http://www.imdb.com/stats. The growth continues to amaze us and we see that the number of filmography credits has nearly doubled since 2010. Thank you. Despite this growth we are pleased to report that your data is being processed and published faster than ever.
Progress and Plans
... From a contributor perspective by Thomas Porter ...
For contribution, the 2014 headlines have been dominated by new ventures. For the first time in IMDb's 24-year history, mobile contribution is a reality, and the ability to check the status of your contribution - from the moment you hit submit, right through to publish - is (albeit still in its infancy) a tangible feature. But before we get all giddy on the giant leaps, let's take a moment to raise a glass to the smaller steps ...
Data Processing: The bread-and-butter of much of what we do in the database content team is data processing. You don’t have to have been a contributor for very long to recall the huge backlogs of unprocessed contributions while we battled complex database migrations and the rebuilding of legacy data vetting tools. In 2014, however, we have reaped the benefits of that work (and your patience) by processing an average of 97% of contributions within our agreed service levels (SLAs, see http://www.imdb.com/czone/times).
Compare the veritable destruction of the traditional Christmas backlog at the beginning of the year (all data types back within SLA by 9th January) to the hangover from backlog hell in 2013 (not back within SLA until 8th March) and you get the idea. Continued investment in improving tools, streamlining data workflows and simplifying data acceptance/rejection policies do not always generate celebration on their own, but these behind-the-scene stepping stones have enabled us to scale with the increase in incoming data, and reflect how seriously we take our role of processing and publishing your contributions as efficiently as possible.
For Bond fans, you might have noticed that the latest title text - Spectre (2015) - went live 20 seconds after its announcement. And the speed in which the new title for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) was submitted, accepted and published was also impressive.
Mobile Contribution: At the tail end of 2013 we launched 'Is this interesting?' voting for trivia, goofs and quotes on mobile apps and the mobile version of the website, our first foray into mobile contribution. In September we began the process of rolling out the first ever mobile contribution interface for free text data types - Plots and Title Trivia. The result is an accessible, simple interface that sets the tone and usability for future contribution.
As well as providing a platform for the ever-growing mobile audience, our goal was to attract brand new contributors. So far, so good; since launch new contributors have increased by 45%, with a large percentage of those contributions added to our top 1,000 MOVIEmeter titles.
Track My Contribution: One of the biggest contributor pain points has always been the lack of visibility into the status of contributions, and the inability to easily find out - or convey - why data has been rejected is a major frustration shared by contributors and staff alike. In December we launched IMDb Contributor (https://contribute.imdb.com/), a new site designed to provide a solution to both.
Contributors adding new titles or episodes can now check the status of their contribution immediately after clicking 'submit'. You can see when the title is queued for processing, when it has been accepted or, in the event of a rejection, you get a clear reason why. And if that reason involves a request for missing data or verification, there is a quick link to amend and resubmit your title contribution.
IMDb Contributor is still in Beta, so if you have used it and would like to provide feedback, we would love to hear it before we roll out the feature to cover more data types in 2015 (http://bit.ly/1718T4j)
Contributor Communities: In 2014 new and seasoned contributors and industry professionals have posted more than 7,000 topics on Get Satisfaction. From contribution questions to new feature requests, our help community has become an essential resource and is still growing.
We would like to extend a massive thanks to the Champs (https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/details/champions) - the heart and soul of the community. Between them they have posted more than 7,400 replies and comments in 2014, including fixing data on behalf of others and encouraging less experienced contributors to self-serve . If you think you have got what it takes to be a Champ, get posting. We would love to welcome you.
More thanks also go to our regular community of experienced contributors who frequent Contributors' Help, a board now dedicated to policy discussion. Over the year staff and contributors have worked together to decide and implement policy changes (like this distributor question: http://imdb.to/13Fimfh) and submission guide updates (like this recent Writers guide tweak: http://imdb.to/1zrPPTw). Of course, contributors don’t always see eye-to-eye and sometimes decisions are limited by existing functionality, but more important is that we have an active forum for this kind of debate. Your input is invaluable - again, thank you.
The Future: In 2015 we will continue to grow and refine the features we have launched in the last 12 months. We will add more data types and features to IMDb Contributor, so you will be able to check the status of contributions beyond just titles and episodes. We will make more data types available for mobile contribution. And our dedication to rapidly processing and publishing your data contributions is, of course, an ongoing priority.
Following the work to move most of IMDb to a platform capable of rapidly publishing accepted data items within minutes rather than days, we have scheduled one of the last major migrations to the same platform - the submission interface. Once in sync, you will be able to add new data to just-approved titles and names, without having to wait for the old once-a-day build cycle.
Continuing to build our working relationships with contributors is vital. Be it via Get Satisfaction or through clearer advice via IMDb Contributor, we want to continue to get better at two-way communication so we know that the features we implement are among the most desired, and the processes and interfaces we improve have the biggest positive impact for contributors. And that is why we urge you to get involved in our Get Satisfaction community, where employees from all over IMDb are looking out for and responding to your requests and ideas.
For example, not being able to sort title keywords alphabetically might not seem like a big deal to some, but for the contributors who want to audit and add hundreds of keywords at a time, this implementation was a must:http://bit.ly/1wwIBvl. And as already mentioned this much requested feature - now known as IMDb Contributor - will benefit everyone: http://bit.ly/1D38F7b.
If you have any suggestions for improving the contribution experience, ideas about new data sources for ingestion or different areas of focus within the entertainment industry (emerging markets, platforms and distribution channels, for example), please share them. Or if you like the sound of someone else's ideas, give them a 'me too'. Yours could be the idea that gets championed next: http://bit.ly/1CQbOtv.
We cannot really thank you enough for all your contributions. Without you, we would not exist. So on behalf of everyone on the Content team, here's to you, our contributors. And here's to 2015.
Thomas Porter
Team Manager - IMDb Database Content
... From a customer perspective by Col Needham ...
Two big themes of 2014 have been around helping our customers to make viewing decisions and then helping them to find where to watch the titles they discover. As the number of titles available to watch grows, we are adding features to help you make sense of the viewing choices and to get more from your entertainment content. Thanks to your help we have made great strides in our coverage of TV titles in 2014 too.
Mobile continues to grow at an amazing pace and we are adding more content and features to our mobile platform with a steady stream of new app releases and updates to the mobile web site at http://m.imdb.com/. We have been very pleased by the response to our mobile apps and thank you for rating them so highly in the various app stores. Our mobile apps have now been downloaded over 100 million times. For details on the latest mobile apps see:
http://www.imdb.com/apps/
Video is also a growing area and we have launched a new video player on the web and added more videos to our mobile apps. This has enabled us to feature a number of exclusive trailer and other video premieres.
Our editorial team also worked tirelessly to keep IMDb full of fresh content each day around events, news, photos and trailers. This content increasingly includes recommendations and highlights based on the team's knowledge and love of all things movie and TV related. We also expanded our guest editor program in 2014 where celebrities provide the content for the IMDb home page for a single day.
Below is a month-by-month look at the highlights of 2014. Outside of these we are constantly making improvements, adding new features or retiring old ones based on your feedback. Even putting aside the continuous data changes, we almost never run the same version of the IMDb software on any two consecutive days. There is always something new launching, either visibly on the site or in the apps or a behind-the-scenes technology or process improvement.
The start of the year is always busy with awards season which is covered by our special section:
http://www.imdb.com/oscars/
with the 2015 season starting to be covered in our new Awards Central section:
http://www.imdb.com/awards-central/
which this year is available on the web and on mobile too.
In January we continued the migration of pages to our new technology platform to ensure faster publication of new data (and by December over 90% of IMDb's page views are now served on this new platform). We also fully launched our 'What to Watch' online interview show series which highlights movies and TV shows for our customers to watch with multiple episodes per month throughout 2014:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3412000/
The best place to find out about this show produced by IMDb is naturally on IMDb itself. January also saw a new all-time record day for page views on IMDb on the day of The Golden Globe awards (by comparison we served nearly as many page views on that single day than we did for the whole of 1997).
In February we launched new versions of our mobile apps to support live updates of results through the remainder of the awards season and new interface for browsing photos. We also added a 'Watch Now' section to highlight the latest releases on Amazon Instant Video:
http://www.imdb.com/watchnow/
In early March the Oscars ceremony saw IMDb's busiest ever minute when people watching at home reached for their laptops, phones and tablets to look-up Kim Novak when she walked on stage to present an award with Matthew McConaughey
IMDbPro is used extensively in the entertainment industry and in March we added the next generation of tools to help people in their professional life, starting with Pro Casting. This service allows casting directors and filmmakers to cast their projects by creating breakdowns and roles, finding matches for roles, building creative lists of talent with whom they would like to work and receiving and managing casting submissions. Actors and actresses using the service can browse hundreds of casting notices, filter them by specific criteria and apply directly for roles.
In April we added more features to help customers find where to watch titles via IMDb. This included US TV listings on the iPhone / iPad app and links to Amazon Instant Video. We launched a new monthly editorial recommendations section called IMDb Picks at:
http://www.imdb.com/imdbpicks/
In May we covered the Cannes Film Festival:
http://www.imdb.com/cannes/
We also improved the recommendations system so that on each title page we generate a better set of recommendations of related titles to watch. We updated our web site video player and added support for embedding the player on other web sites.
June saw one of my personal favourite launches of the year via the Movie Times feature in the iPhone app. This enables you to pick a movie to see in theaters based on genre, rating and other factors, as well as the times the movie starts or ends and even what time you should leave home for the theater.
In July we covered Comic-Con
http://www.imdb.com/comic-con/
In August as part of our on-going work to improve TV coverage and functionality in IMDb we added a 'Top Rated Episodes' feature to all TV /title/ pages, for example:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/
We also added the next generation of the IMDb quiz at:
http://www.imdb.com/poll/v2/
In September polls were added to the mobile site and mobile apps and we launched a mobile version of IMDbPro, available by accessing https://pro-labs.imdb.com/ from any mobile device. We also added plot keyword relevance voting to surface the most appropriate keywords, for example:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/keywords
There was an amusing incident around Liam Neeson's IMDb headshot covered in the press in September too:
http://usat.ly/1ztosID
In October we began a fundraising partnership with The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences starting with a series of videos to promote the new academy museum at:
http://www.imdb.com/academymuseum/
We also replaced the IMDb video player for improved performance and compatibility across more devices. On the message boards we added support for the full set of Unicode Emoji.
November saw the launch of our new home page design and also the 'seen' service for tracking how many titles you have watched. Previously the only way to mark something as seen was to cast a vote but we realize that not everyone likes to give a specific score or can remember exactly what they thought of a movie or show seen years ago. You can track seen percentages on every name page and by title and by role. For example, how many movies in which Clint Eastwood acted have you seen:
http://www.imdb.com/seen/nm0000142-actor-movie/
Finally, in December we launched the 'seen' feature on the Top 250 and Bottom 100 pages:
http://www.imdb.com/chart/top
I managed to get to 250/250 just in time for the new IMDb profile badge for the 2014 Top 250 to be issued next week. We also improved the main site search to make it both faster and more tolerant of spelling errors.
We simplified and re-launched the Contributors' Charter at:
http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?contributorscharter
With your help we will continue to innovate and grow IMDb with new features and expand the database across 2015. We are recruiting in the UK (Bristol) and US (Seattle & Santa Monica):
http://www.imdb.com/jobs
Traffic and Usage
The IMDb audience continues to expand and reach more people around the world on more devices. Your data contributions are once again seen and appreciated more widely than ever before, now by over 200 million unique customers per month on IMDb. Beyond this, you will find IMDb content being licensed and used on more services, especially on the Amazon Instant Video platform. The Amazon Fire TV uses IMDb data throughout its interface and inside the X-ray feature:
http://www.imdb.com/x-ray/
Earlier in the year we updated our marketing video with more numbers and some new celebrity testimonials showing how IMDb is used within the entertainment industry:
http://imdb.to/13FdC9B
For more details on IMDb generally, please visit our press area:
http://www.imdb.com/press
and see the 'IMDb in the News' section, including our annual 'Year in Review' section:
http://www.imdb.com/bestof2014
We would like to encourage everyone to get involved in building a bigger and better IMDb. We thank you for playing your role in filling the gaps because every type of data and every title is important in some way; see our Contributor Zone at http://www.imdb.com/czone/
We will be sharing this message widely and so if you have contributed any data in 2014, our gratitude applies equally to you.
Thanks and Feedback
Thanks again for all your support during the year. As always, ideas and constructive feedback are welcome. Please join us in the Contributors' Help message board for policy discussions:
http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000042/threads/
or contact us via Get Satisfaction for more tactical issues:
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb
You can follow IMDb on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/imdb
and on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/imdb
Thanks and we wish you a Happy New Year!
Col Needham,
IMDb Founder and CEO
on behalf of the whole IMDb Team
Col Needham
IMDb Founder and CEO
Thanks again to the top 250 and also to everyone who contributed to IMDb last year -- every data contribution helps! If anyone outside of the top 250 would like to know their 2014 (only) live item total and position in the complete list, please post a reply here and, for a limited time, we will try to let you know as long as you have submitted more than 200 live items.
Happy New Year from IMDb!
Col
Introduction and Thanks
Welcome to the 20th edition of our end-of-year message to IMDb's top data contributors as we head into 2015 during which we will celebrate our 25th anniversary. We are looking forward to an interesting year with many improvements planned. If this is your first year then welcome to the list. It is also good to see many familiar names, and a quick scan shows that Kurt Wallsten is the only person to have been included in every edition. Special thanks Kurt.
This message is being sent to the 250 most prolific contributors in 2014. It will also be shared widely such that everyone can appreciate your efforts.
We would first like to extend a massive thank you for all your data contributions in 2014 on behalf of the IMDb staff and our (now) 200+ million monthly visitors.
For a review of progress over the years, all 20 issues of this message will be available at:
http://www.imdb.com/czone/top_msg
The Numbers
The table at the end of this message shows the number of approved, non-duplicate data items (including deletions / corrections) which you have contributed in 2014 and your position within the top 250 contributors.
In total there are now over 180 million items in the IMDb database, collected since our launch in 1990. Some highlights from the 2014 numbers:
* over 3.1 million titles with over 400,000 added in 2014
* over 6.2 million names with over 700,000 added in 2014
* over 63 million filmography credits with over 7.5 million added in 2014
* over 475,000 companies with over 40,000 added in 2014
* over 3,000 events with over 1,000 added in 2014
More statistics are available at http://www.imdb.com/stats. The growth continues to amaze us and we see that the number of filmography credits has nearly doubled since 2010. Thank you. Despite this growth we are pleased to report that your data is being processed and published faster than ever.
Progress and Plans
... From a contributor perspective by Thomas Porter ...
For contribution, the 2014 headlines have been dominated by new ventures. For the first time in IMDb's 24-year history, mobile contribution is a reality, and the ability to check the status of your contribution - from the moment you hit submit, right through to publish - is (albeit still in its infancy) a tangible feature. But before we get all giddy on the giant leaps, let's take a moment to raise a glass to the smaller steps ...
Data Processing: The bread-and-butter of much of what we do in the database content team is data processing. You don’t have to have been a contributor for very long to recall the huge backlogs of unprocessed contributions while we battled complex database migrations and the rebuilding of legacy data vetting tools. In 2014, however, we have reaped the benefits of that work (and your patience) by processing an average of 97% of contributions within our agreed service levels (SLAs, see http://www.imdb.com/czone/times).
Compare the veritable destruction of the traditional Christmas backlog at the beginning of the year (all data types back within SLA by 9th January) to the hangover from backlog hell in 2013 (not back within SLA until 8th March) and you get the idea. Continued investment in improving tools, streamlining data workflows and simplifying data acceptance/rejection policies do not always generate celebration on their own, but these behind-the-scene stepping stones have enabled us to scale with the increase in incoming data, and reflect how seriously we take our role of processing and publishing your contributions as efficiently as possible.
For Bond fans, you might have noticed that the latest title text - Spectre (2015) - went live 20 seconds after its announcement. And the speed in which the new title for Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens (2015) was submitted, accepted and published was also impressive.
Mobile Contribution: At the tail end of 2013 we launched 'Is this interesting?' voting for trivia, goofs and quotes on mobile apps and the mobile version of the website, our first foray into mobile contribution. In September we began the process of rolling out the first ever mobile contribution interface for free text data types - Plots and Title Trivia. The result is an accessible, simple interface that sets the tone and usability for future contribution.
As well as providing a platform for the ever-growing mobile audience, our goal was to attract brand new contributors. So far, so good; since launch new contributors have increased by 45%, with a large percentage of those contributions added to our top 1,000 MOVIEmeter titles.
Track My Contribution: One of the biggest contributor pain points has always been the lack of visibility into the status of contributions, and the inability to easily find out - or convey - why data has been rejected is a major frustration shared by contributors and staff alike. In December we launched IMDb Contributor (https://contribute.imdb.com/), a new site designed to provide a solution to both.
Contributors adding new titles or episodes can now check the status of their contribution immediately after clicking 'submit'. You can see when the title is queued for processing, when it has been accepted or, in the event of a rejection, you get a clear reason why. And if that reason involves a request for missing data or verification, there is a quick link to amend and resubmit your title contribution.
IMDb Contributor is still in Beta, so if you have used it and would like to provide feedback, we would love to hear it before we roll out the feature to cover more data types in 2015 (http://bit.ly/1718T4j)
Contributor Communities: In 2014 new and seasoned contributors and industry professionals have posted more than 7,000 topics on Get Satisfaction. From contribution questions to new feature requests, our help community has become an essential resource and is still growing.
We would like to extend a massive thanks to the Champs (https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb/details/champions) - the heart and soul of the community. Between them they have posted more than 7,400 replies and comments in 2014, including fixing data on behalf of others and encouraging less experienced contributors to self-serve . If you think you have got what it takes to be a Champ, get posting. We would love to welcome you.
More thanks also go to our regular community of experienced contributors who frequent Contributors' Help, a board now dedicated to policy discussion. Over the year staff and contributors have worked together to decide and implement policy changes (like this distributor question: http://imdb.to/13Fimfh) and submission guide updates (like this recent Writers guide tweak: http://imdb.to/1zrPPTw). Of course, contributors don’t always see eye-to-eye and sometimes decisions are limited by existing functionality, but more important is that we have an active forum for this kind of debate. Your input is invaluable - again, thank you.
The Future: In 2015 we will continue to grow and refine the features we have launched in the last 12 months. We will add more data types and features to IMDb Contributor, so you will be able to check the status of contributions beyond just titles and episodes. We will make more data types available for mobile contribution. And our dedication to rapidly processing and publishing your data contributions is, of course, an ongoing priority.
Following the work to move most of IMDb to a platform capable of rapidly publishing accepted data items within minutes rather than days, we have scheduled one of the last major migrations to the same platform - the submission interface. Once in sync, you will be able to add new data to just-approved titles and names, without having to wait for the old once-a-day build cycle.
Continuing to build our working relationships with contributors is vital. Be it via Get Satisfaction or through clearer advice via IMDb Contributor, we want to continue to get better at two-way communication so we know that the features we implement are among the most desired, and the processes and interfaces we improve have the biggest positive impact for contributors. And that is why we urge you to get involved in our Get Satisfaction community, where employees from all over IMDb are looking out for and responding to your requests and ideas.
For example, not being able to sort title keywords alphabetically might not seem like a big deal to some, but for the contributors who want to audit and add hundreds of keywords at a time, this implementation was a must:http://bit.ly/1wwIBvl. And as already mentioned this much requested feature - now known as IMDb Contributor - will benefit everyone: http://bit.ly/1D38F7b.
If you have any suggestions for improving the contribution experience, ideas about new data sources for ingestion or different areas of focus within the entertainment industry (emerging markets, platforms and distribution channels, for example), please share them. Or if you like the sound of someone else's ideas, give them a 'me too'. Yours could be the idea that gets championed next: http://bit.ly/1CQbOtv.
We cannot really thank you enough for all your contributions. Without you, we would not exist. So on behalf of everyone on the Content team, here's to you, our contributors. And here's to 2015.
Thomas Porter
Team Manager - IMDb Database Content
... From a customer perspective by Col Needham ...
Two big themes of 2014 have been around helping our customers to make viewing decisions and then helping them to find where to watch the titles they discover. As the number of titles available to watch grows, we are adding features to help you make sense of the viewing choices and to get more from your entertainment content. Thanks to your help we have made great strides in our coverage of TV titles in 2014 too.
Mobile continues to grow at an amazing pace and we are adding more content and features to our mobile platform with a steady stream of new app releases and updates to the mobile web site at http://m.imdb.com/. We have been very pleased by the response to our mobile apps and thank you for rating them so highly in the various app stores. Our mobile apps have now been downloaded over 100 million times. For details on the latest mobile apps see:
http://www.imdb.com/apps/
Video is also a growing area and we have launched a new video player on the web and added more videos to our mobile apps. This has enabled us to feature a number of exclusive trailer and other video premieres.
Our editorial team also worked tirelessly to keep IMDb full of fresh content each day around events, news, photos and trailers. This content increasingly includes recommendations and highlights based on the team's knowledge and love of all things movie and TV related. We also expanded our guest editor program in 2014 where celebrities provide the content for the IMDb home page for a single day.
Below is a month-by-month look at the highlights of 2014. Outside of these we are constantly making improvements, adding new features or retiring old ones based on your feedback. Even putting aside the continuous data changes, we almost never run the same version of the IMDb software on any two consecutive days. There is always something new launching, either visibly on the site or in the apps or a behind-the-scenes technology or process improvement.
The start of the year is always busy with awards season which is covered by our special section:
http://www.imdb.com/oscars/
with the 2015 season starting to be covered in our new Awards Central section:
http://www.imdb.com/awards-central/
which this year is available on the web and on mobile too.
In January we continued the migration of pages to our new technology platform to ensure faster publication of new data (and by December over 90% of IMDb's page views are now served on this new platform). We also fully launched our 'What to Watch' online interview show series which highlights movies and TV shows for our customers to watch with multiple episodes per month throughout 2014:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3412000/
The best place to find out about this show produced by IMDb is naturally on IMDb itself. January also saw a new all-time record day for page views on IMDb on the day of The Golden Globe awards (by comparison we served nearly as many page views on that single day than we did for the whole of 1997).
In February we launched new versions of our mobile apps to support live updates of results through the remainder of the awards season and new interface for browsing photos. We also added a 'Watch Now' section to highlight the latest releases on Amazon Instant Video:
http://www.imdb.com/watchnow/
In early March the Oscars ceremony saw IMDb's busiest ever minute when people watching at home reached for their laptops, phones and tablets to look-up Kim Novak when she walked on stage to present an award with Matthew McConaughey
IMDbPro is used extensively in the entertainment industry and in March we added the next generation of tools to help people in their professional life, starting with Pro Casting. This service allows casting directors and filmmakers to cast their projects by creating breakdowns and roles, finding matches for roles, building creative lists of talent with whom they would like to work and receiving and managing casting submissions. Actors and actresses using the service can browse hundreds of casting notices, filter them by specific criteria and apply directly for roles.
In April we added more features to help customers find where to watch titles via IMDb. This included US TV listings on the iPhone / iPad app and links to Amazon Instant Video. We launched a new monthly editorial recommendations section called IMDb Picks at:
http://www.imdb.com/imdbpicks/
In May we covered the Cannes Film Festival:
http://www.imdb.com/cannes/
We also improved the recommendations system so that on each title page we generate a better set of recommendations of related titles to watch. We updated our web site video player and added support for embedding the player on other web sites.
June saw one of my personal favourite launches of the year via the Movie Times feature in the iPhone app. This enables you to pick a movie to see in theaters based on genre, rating and other factors, as well as the times the movie starts or ends and even what time you should leave home for the theater.
In July we covered Comic-Con
http://www.imdb.com/comic-con/
In August as part of our on-going work to improve TV coverage and functionality in IMDb we added a 'Top Rated Episodes' feature to all TV /title/ pages, for example:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/
We also added the next generation of the IMDb quiz at:
http://www.imdb.com/poll/v2/
In September polls were added to the mobile site and mobile apps and we launched a mobile version of IMDbPro, available by accessing https://pro-labs.imdb.com/ from any mobile device. We also added plot keyword relevance voting to surface the most appropriate keywords, for example:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/keywords
There was an amusing incident around Liam Neeson's IMDb headshot covered in the press in September too:
http://usat.ly/1ztosID
In October we began a fundraising partnership with The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences starting with a series of videos to promote the new academy museum at:
http://www.imdb.com/academymuseum/
We also replaced the IMDb video player for improved performance and compatibility across more devices. On the message boards we added support for the full set of Unicode Emoji.
November saw the launch of our new home page design and also the 'seen' service for tracking how many titles you have watched. Previously the only way to mark something as seen was to cast a vote but we realize that not everyone likes to give a specific score or can remember exactly what they thought of a movie or show seen years ago. You can track seen percentages on every name page and by title and by role. For example, how many movies in which Clint Eastwood acted have you seen:
http://www.imdb.com/seen/nm0000142-actor-movie/
Finally, in December we launched the 'seen' feature on the Top 250 and Bottom 100 pages:
http://www.imdb.com/chart/top
I managed to get to 250/250 just in time for the new IMDb profile badge for the 2014 Top 250 to be issued next week. We also improved the main site search to make it both faster and more tolerant of spelling errors.
We simplified and re-launched the Contributors' Charter at:
http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?contributorscharter
With your help we will continue to innovate and grow IMDb with new features and expand the database across 2015. We are recruiting in the UK (Bristol) and US (Seattle & Santa Monica):
http://www.imdb.com/jobs
Traffic and Usage
The IMDb audience continues to expand and reach more people around the world on more devices. Your data contributions are once again seen and appreciated more widely than ever before, now by over 200 million unique customers per month on IMDb. Beyond this, you will find IMDb content being licensed and used on more services, especially on the Amazon Instant Video platform. The Amazon Fire TV uses IMDb data throughout its interface and inside the X-ray feature:
http://www.imdb.com/x-ray/
Earlier in the year we updated our marketing video with more numbers and some new celebrity testimonials showing how IMDb is used within the entertainment industry:
http://imdb.to/13FdC9B
For more details on IMDb generally, please visit our press area:
http://www.imdb.com/press
and see the 'IMDb in the News' section, including our annual 'Year in Review' section:
http://www.imdb.com/bestof2014
We would like to encourage everyone to get involved in building a bigger and better IMDb. We thank you for playing your role in filling the gaps because every type of data and every title is important in some way; see our Contributor Zone at http://www.imdb.com/czone/
We will be sharing this message widely and so if you have contributed any data in 2014, our gratitude applies equally to you.
Thanks and Feedback
Thanks again for all your support during the year. As always, ideas and constructive feedback are welcome. Please join us in the Contributors' Help message board for policy discussions:
http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000042/threads/
or contact us via Get Satisfaction for more tactical issues:
https://getsatisfaction.com/imdb
You can follow IMDb on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/imdb
and on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/imdb
Thanks and we wish you a Happy New Year!
Col Needham,
IMDb Founder and CEO
on behalf of the whole IMDb Team
Rank Live Name (registered username)
---- ------ --------------------------
1 392760 cinelamour (cinelamour)
2 194650 inespape-1 (inespape-1)
3 192800 Christian Bonamusa (pegg1976)
4 183908 Mike Hafezi (TVBuff90)
5 147562 kkmmss (kkmmss)
6 146125 Kelly Werre (sarge-19)
7 144374 Joe Wawrzyniak (Woodyanders)
8 141763 michaelfool (michaelfool)
9 133455 ind3 (ind3)
10 124019 Kobie Gantt (akira625)
11 118500 Login to (lourencoseruya-274-679942)
12 114216 Mikael Bryzell (mikael-bryzell)
13 108798 Gene Chin (Huggo)
14 105638 xylit333 (xylit333)
15 99629 elouie2000 (elouie2000)
16 91752 deickemeyer (deickemeyer)
17 89557 yellowmagicorchestra (yellowmagicorchestra)
18 87828 FangsNL (FangsNL)
19 73930 Kurt Wallsten (Kurre)
20 73062 B. Mott (ben-5678)
21 67599 Miguel Monteiro (mnmonteiro)
22 62417 miriam_v_f (miriam_v_f)
23 60801 Bradley Kent (bradleykent1)
24 59908 Chip (Chip_douglas)
25 57142 Serguei Oukladov (yook)
26 56190 untilter (untilter)
27 53979 sheilaforever (sheilaforever)
28 53912 charnetha2 (charnetha2)
29 51605 Ian Lueck (ianlueck)
30 49842 John Doe (unknown1000)
31 49267 Jack Lamas (ExplorerDS6789)
32 46579 brin (snail3)
33 46093 DariusCZ (DariusCZ)
34 43905 PAUL PARISOT (paulparisot)
35 42963 Jordan Welch (mcwelch7)
36 42954 Eric Greene @ IMDb (Thalberg3000)
37 41350 Andrew Morris (Moz79)
38 40802 Spencer Higham (spencerhigham148)
39 40647 Paul Cop (marcial84)
40 40498 Jack Tillmany (tillmany)
41 40314 Derek Hazell (vande)
42 40262 Gary M. James (GMJames)
43 40108 Martin Underwood (martinu-2)
44 39832 Uncle-T (Uncle-T)
45 38417 Jochen Bauer (jb71a)
46 37909 Tony Martin (GBrazier)
47 37699 Ricardo Godinho (richboy_is_dead)
48 37424 Dekkappai (Dekkappai)
49 37115 Gregory Alexandre (Greg75)
50 35239 Cornelius Rehder (E-Kartoffel)
51 34806 Majon1 (Majon1)
52 34280 MrBlondNYC (MrBlondNYC)
53 33966 Koenraad G.F. VISSERS (k-vissers)
54 33542 Marvin Alleyne (marv-84)
55 33369 Haynes Lee (haynes-2)
56 33133 Bert Dijkhoff (Holojarg)
57 32462 ScarlettMoon (ScarlettMoon)
58 32269 Christopher Flynn (ChrisFlynn372)
59 31690 joeddelozier (joeddelozier)
60 31414 Carl Hitchcock (carllh)
61 31257 John Embury (jem-33)
62 30527 bela gal (gal bela)
63 29245 francisco ogalde (JakeroRock)
64 29121 Leciaguecahar Christian (leciaguezahar.christian)
65 28632 arno kazarian @ IMDb (arno-3)
66 28058 Roman Gareev (supremoray)
67 27729 skillwithaquill (skillwithaquill)
68 27618 M. W. (ostblockschaedel)
69 27535 Largo Don Wen (LargoDonWen)
70 27142 Neil Roberts (neilr64)
71 26862 brian gusse (fredcdobbs5)
72 26119 Daniel Dudley (Smart-Guy)
73 25322 nono-13 (nono-13)
74 25205 Leslie Gan (leslie0318-176-813749)
75 25100 Sampsa86 (Sampsa86)
76 25074 Lari Huhtala (sininenpiste)
77 24940 Justin Boggan (justinboggan)
78 24936 Jason Nadle (jason-nadle)
79 24700 Gregor Overzier (Akasava)
80 24045 kenichiku (kenichiku)
81 23956 James R. Banta (jaybee-3)
82 23902 Jan G. (jan_nihilation)
83 23820 Heinrich-Pflueger (Heinrich-Pflueger)
84 23531 Chris Schairer (SchaiDog)
85 23302 loverswithcassie (loverswithcassie)
86 22843 mc mc (McBE92)
87 22757 Jack Backstreet (jbacks3)
88 22616 Edward Hewitt (edwardahewitt)
89 22216 Leslie Howard Adams (horn-5)
90 21942 Emanuel Jackson (Cyborg89)
91 21880 Invi Sec (invisec)
92 21770 Brian Campos (bcampos862)
93 21365 TrivWhiz (TrivWhiz)
94 21254 dj-dom (dj-dom)
95 21244 lapantera (lapantera)
96 20260 projectobjectvault (projectobjectvault)
97 19987 dbassler1304 (dbassler1304)
98 19912 Guilherme Omena (guilhermeomena)
99 19898 Max Mogavero (max-wellsmart92)
100 19750 Anders Emil Lundin (Oldenbur)
101 19702 Felix Saenz (fsaenz0125)
102 19486 modin (modin)
103 19421 Ron Higgins (Ron)
104 19389 statmanjeff (statmanjeff)
105 19114 Sheldon Warnock (swarnock)
106 19044 jaguar83 H (jaguar83)
107 18961 Johan Melle (johanim)
108 18906 davefoss (davefoss)
109 18643 Bogong (Bogong)
110 18328 arorashadow_2003 (arorashadow_2003)
111 18183 Steven Folger (SuperSteve1)
112 18173 Ben Hallums (Benhallums1)
113 18088 Gabriel Taverney (duke1029)
114 17899 Luis Javier Doncel Vecino (ljdoncel)
115 17849 dwildt (dwildt)
116 17837 Tomi Haapanen (hatoju)
117 17455 T.J. Lindner (Tom-413)
118 17171 Larry B. (mep1019)
119 17137 dharmiroger (dharmiroger)
120 17077 George Kaparounakis (capamaroux-1)
121 17021 JeiceWarrior (JeiceWarrior)
122 17010 Alex Warheit (TiredAlex)
123 16918 CPPB-Actorboy (CPPB-Actorboy)
124 16810 inthe80s (inthe80s)
125 16802 Donald Minifie (minifie-1)
126 16683 GlosBio (GlosBio)
127 16670 Paweł Kalinowski (kalina-10)
128 16554 wwane (wwane)
129 16510 screamtwo25 (screamtwo25)
130 16427 guy Bellinger (guy-bellinger)
131 16353 Marhleet_DR (Marhleet_DR)
132 16084 Tom Weaver (Tipster)
133 16083 Skip Eastport (SkipEastport)
134 16051 Jacques Rigborg (Rigborg)
135 15575 caugusto16 (caugusto16)
136 15352 Eye Opener TV (eyeopenertv-com)
137 15200 Roee Yaron (roeeyaron)
138 14874 Kari Hakkinen (Kari Hakkinen)
139 14867 motley_moth (motley_moth)
140 14781 Dale V (dale79)
141 14750 shatterdaymorn (shatterdaymorn)
142 14731 franko1212 (franko1212)
143 14301 nrangerseven (nrangerseven)
144 14206 jpulid2 (jpulid2)
145 14069 Sandeep Mukherjee (sandeep306)
146 14040 neindyfeiv (neindyfeiv)
147 13907 David Wong (donga1989)
148 13771 Robert W. Anderson (Bronco46)
149 13625 aiwakaiy (aiwakaiy)
150 13616 David (xmagic_dustx)
151 13464 failedmagician (failedmagician)
152 13355 Paul Hunter (bob the moo)
153 13265 Jordi Reinders (jordireinders97)
154 13240 Morgan Mireski (leftfieldimdb)
155 13238 Mike Germade (mike_germade)
156 12960 Michaela Dvorakova (midvor1)
157 12935 jhpebpo (jhpebpo)
158 12663 Joon Vriens (rtlive)
159 12633 Stuart Hample (stuarthample)
160 12543 Stephane Maltais (MStephane)
161 12522 Nicola Ferri (Bolkonskij)
162 12189 Aleksey Kouksa (kouksa)
163 12179 smcgann14 (smcgann14)
164 12058 Phillip Arnold (tazjjh)
165 11838 David Glagovsky (Moodri)
166 11797 Adrian Gonzalez Vina (prinsmars_91)
167 11615 selmovero (selmovero)
168 11600 Eric Tuscanes (Eric-Spall)
169 11551 Kieran Kenney (Kieran_Kenney)
170 11519 Vuk DraA3/4iA (siratlas1968)
171 11493 Matt Affleck (Matt-Affleck)
172 11432 ff13 (ff13)
173 11414 Viktor Jovanovic (marko-11)
174 11360 Jillian Poole (Poole_Jillian)
175 11204 Allister Coots (tfssmbpl-imdb)
176 11162 pawrutko (pawrutko)
177 11063 Michael Feist (Channing_F)
178 11004 Piotr Leoniak (kinoholik)
179 11000 JenniferMancini (JenniferMancini)
180 10848 mtw120 (mtw120)
181 10723 markpaone (markpaone)
182 10716 Hailey Shannon (Hailey-7)
183 10710 mildperil (mildperil)
184 10672 steven arnold (St-Ar)
185 10663 Mnet America (Mnet_America)
186 10624 Rudolf Ulrich (ulrich.oeih)
187 10598 Valkyrslayer (Valkyrslayer)
188 10556 David Diaz (Bonnascope)
189 10448 Brad Couch (bradcouch-105-549937)
190 10423 Ted Glason (Ted_Glason)
191 10349 Gregg Blake (gblake1115)
192 10315 mark williams (markwilliams-2)
193 10311 Col Needham @ IMDb (Col Needham)
194 10276 Callum Walmsley (Solar_Dragon)
195 10108 Constance Lassort (constance-lassort)
196 10020 Jonathan Wiking (jwiking62)
197 9927 Pelusa Films (pelusafilms)
198 9750 Michael J. Epstein (MichaelJEpstein)
199 9655 miz-1 (miz-1)
200 9641 michaeldoepfer (michaeldoepfer)
201 9595 Frank Brenner (SirPercy)
202 9580 sidney burns (burnssidney)
203 9554 Arthur Hausner (Art-22)
204 9541 Gregory Speed (speedjr-gregory)
205 9538 Taylor Jans (Taylor-s-jans)
206 9495 Pieric PILI (Frank-Harmon)
207 9457 kyle qyu (Qylecoop)
208 9409 alvaro-13 (alvaro-13)
209 9337 Mark Smith (Zynntyxx)
210 9334 ppintus (ppintus)
211 9330 J. Saastamoinen (MrIQ)
212 9325 bryan-rosebr-rose99 (bryan-rosebr-rose99)
213 9318 david-879 (david-879)
214 9315 Joe Bowman (reassurance)
215 9175 Bianca Berbick (MJJMoonwalker)
216 9144 Marvin Lemmen (puk_400)
217 9139 Vincent Lefevre (vinc17)
218 9138 Marco van Hoof (k_luifje)
219 9124 impepa (impepa)
220 9113 Marcello Caristi (MC83)
221 9045 gabor_osvath (gabor_osvath)
222 9023 vitale-daniele (vitale-daniele)
223 8863 Michael Brydon (MBrydon-2)
224 8696 TFx (TFx)
225 8673 Tiago Ribeiro (Tiago_Ribeiro)
226 8638 Mike Farah (farah-20)
227 8637 Thierri Vanholm (thierri.vanholm)
228 8570 Martin Rutegard (marre_rut)
229 8416 Polly_Kat (Polly_Kat)
230 8399 Chris Amon (a_chris80)
231 8331 Michael Stock (m-Stock)
232 8310 Andrew Brownlow (andrewbrownlow)
233 8262 Donny (Greenss)
234 8190 Gary Krause (scgary66)
235 8165 Syl (Syl)
236 8144 CY Sim (irwinner)
237 8142 Allison Marsh (allison-glader)
238 8140 Lance McPhee (Godslaye)
239 8101 A B (Alfabeta)
240 8084 Elly Schenkel (RuneThandy)
241 8052 Gerardo (evilsu-390-451096)
242 7866 A Nield (ANield)
243 7843 jp_91 (jp_91)
244 7667 thomas-numberger (thomas-numberger)
245 7459 Kristy Marshall (brainybrailler)
246 7446 Don Wood (majorrtom)
247 7421 benrolls (benrolls)
248 7401 Colin Penney (colinpenney)
249 7380 udayamisra (udayamisra)
250 7380 SlapCapFever (SlapCapFever)
Col Needham
IMDb Founder and CEO
No Responses!