Network: A movie buff with a modem

Colin Needham fell in love with film when he was a teenager. He saw so many movies that he had trouble remembering them all. So he started keeping a list, and the rest is Web history. Tamsin Todd talks to the founder of the Internet Movie Database

In Turn of the Century, Kurt Andersen's best-selling novel about the infotainment industry, software executive Lizzie Zimbalist complains that she can't find anyone to hire in New York: "I really should be doing this somewhere out west." She's just repeating conventional industry wisdom: if your work involves computers, get yourself to Washington state or northern California. But Colin Needham isn't on the West Coast. He's in Bristol, where he helped found the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) in 1990.

Today IMDb is one of the best-known sites on the Web. It gets more than two million page views every day, and ranks among the top 50 most-visited sites. Among the many awards it has won are six Webbies (the Web's answer to the Oscars). And in April 1998 it was acquired by Internet retailer Amazon.com. Yet Needham, now managing director of IMDb, is still based in Bristol.

The sale to Amazon (for an undisclosed amount) must have been a windfall for Needham, but there are few signs of it in his home. It's an airy house in a new development near Bristol's Parkway station, with a toy-filled garden and plenty of room for Needham, his wife, Karen, and six-year-old twins. But it is by no means enormous.

Needham and his wife share a blue Toyota. The only obvious luxury is the 50-inch TV at one end of the living-room. ("I wanted a projector, but we couldn't have that in the living-room, so this was a compromise") Karen, a teacher by training, manages the IMDb helpdesk, and other IMDb employees are scattered around the world.

"IMDb is a model virtual company," Needham says. "All company business is done by e-mail. It doesn't really matter where we are."

IMDb bills itself as the ultimate movie reference source, and it's hard to contest that claim. There are 2.25 million filmography entries in the database, covering half a million people and 200,000 titles (including films, TV series and videos). Each movie entry includes complete credits, awards, production details, taglines and other information. All the entries are hyperlinked, so users can follow a favourite actor's progress from film to film.

The information on the database comes entirely from its users, who, since 1990, have contributed cast lists, synopses and other information. IMDb editors review and verify the contributions before they are posted. Today the database is so extensive, says Needham, that it's even used by industry insiders. Hollywood producers use it to hire cast and crew and check CVs they suspect may be padded. Crew members and actors contact IMDb to keep their credits up to date. Stanley Kubrick was a regular user.

Needham sounds gleeful as he talks about IMDb, and no wonder. Through it he's been able to combine his two interests - movies and computers. "I'm a movie buff with a modem who used to have too much time on his hands," he laughs. Looking like an English version of Bill Gates - slight build, mousy hair, wire-framed glasses - he describes the software business he started as a teenager in the early 1980s (he's now 32). He wrote games for a Sharp computer and sold them via ads in the back of computer magazines. "That kept me in clothes, records, computers, driving lessons, between ages 14 and 16."

He developed a passion for movies after his family bought a video player in 1981. "A friend of my mother's had a video shop and would lend us movies for two weeks. I watched Alien 14 times, once a day for two weeks." His favourite film is Vertigo, his favourite director Hitchcock, and he's a fan of 1940s film noir and 1930s screwball comedies.

He studied computer science at Leeds and took a job in research and development, but his obsession with movies didn't wane. He found himself losing track of the movies he'd seen, so he put together a private database with information about each one. He joined the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies, and in August 1990 he posted his database to the list, creating the earliest version of IMDb. Since the Web didn't exist then, users had to download the database before they could access its information.

Searchability improved in early 1993, when an e-mail interface was developed (the interface still answers e-mail search requests), and, more dramatically, when the database went live and fully interactive on the Web in September 1993.

By 1995 traffic and submission volumes were so high that volunteers couldn't keep up with the workload (many were putting in 50 hours each week). They realised they would either have to shut down or form a company and sell advertising to pay for employees and servers. So in early 1996, IMDb's four original directors met - for the first time ever - in London to draw up articles of association.

In March 1996, they bought their first server on a credit card. Five months later, Needham gave up his day job to manage IMDb full time. "It was incredibly hard work: seven-day weeks, 18-hour days." The gamble paid off, though. Advertisers liked the site's traffic levels, and soon Needham was able to start paying the former IMDb volunteers.

Still, IMDb's managers were careful about spending money, Needham says. Even today the site has fewer than 50 employees. By keeping costs low, IMDb was able to turn a profit by 1997. "We were really bizarre - an Internet company that wasn't losing money."

If business was going so well, why sell IMDb to Amazon - a move some claimed was lucrative for the company's directors but compromised the community principles around which the database had been built? Needham is quick to point out that financial gain wasn't the main reason for selling to Amazon. "Since 1995 we'd had countless offers from big names to buy the database. We always said we're not interested."

A meeting with Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, changed Needham's mind. Needham received an e-mail asking him to meet Bezos in London in January 1998. Bezos left a strong impression. "I showed up in this hotel room and there was Jeff, who's just an inspiration to everyone, and incredibly smart," Needham recalls. "He and Amazon understood what we were about more than anyone else. They didn't want to take over the database and ruin it."

Bezos and Needham talked about similarities between the two companies. IMDb was a community for film lovers, just as Amazon was a site for book lovers. "If you care passionately about books or about film, then these are places where you can go to interact with other people who care about those things. There's a great community feel."

Amazon, like IMDb, encouraged users to participate in the site by contributing customer reviews. "IMDb and Amazon are very customer-focused. Jeff always says: `We're obsessed with the customer.' Well, you can't be more obsessed with the customer than letting them build your site. Customers have built our site over the last 10 years."

Amazon wanted IMDb because it was preparing to launch a video shop and needed to fill it with content and customers. There were also clear benefits for IMDb, says Needham. As a subsidiary of Amazon, IMDb would be backed by powerful funding. "I can worry less about where the next advertising cheque is coming from, and worry more about how we make IMDb better," he says. "The users win because the site's now funded at the level it needs to keep going."

Needham is quick to emphasise the differences between his site and Amazon's. IMDb is independently operated from Bristol and there are no plans to consolidate the sites. "As Jeff puts it, the IMDb site is optimised for information browsing, and the Amazon video site is optimised for electronic commerce. That's why the two sites will always be separate entities."

Still, it's clear that Needham works closely with Amazon HQ. When I call to say I'll be late arriving, he's hasty on the phone: later he explains he was watching for Amazon's new site - selling toys and consumer electronics - to go live. He quotes Bezos frequently, and would spend the following week in Seattle.

There have been changes to IMDb since the acquisition. In September 1998 the site was redesigned. "We'd been planning a site redesign for three years, but we never had the time or the resources to be able to do that," Needham explains. There are more employees now, including several based in Seattle. Repackaged IMDb content, like trivia and cast lists, appears in Amazon's video store, and there are direct links between Amazon and the IMDb site.

Still, these aren't major changes, and certainly the site redesign improved accessibility. Needham is consistently enthusiastic about the acquisition. "As a Web publisher, it's the dream scenario because you get to do what you've always loved to be doing, but with somebody to fund the site properly going forward."

Securing long-term funding for IMDb was important for Needham. The Amazon deal ensured that years of hard work wouldn't go to waste. It mattered on a personal level, too. IMDb isn't just business: it's his main hobby, and obsession.

"I use it all the time - and not just in a superficial way, because it's my site and I suppose I better use it," he says with a laugh. "I just love it. I'm my site's biggest fan."

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com