IMDb was one of those online pioneers that made the early Internet approachable. When it was founded in 1990, years before Google or Yahoo or even Bill Gates' "Internet Tidal Wave” memo at Microsoft, founder Col Needham understood that people would want handy access to information about movies.
Now those users are mobile -- and IMDb still gets it.
IMDb's movies and TV apps for iOS and Android have now been downloaded more than 100 million times, the company tells Mashable exclusively, which puts it in rarified air that includes Facebook, Instagram, Angry Birds and others still counted in the dozens.
“We launched our first app in December of 2009, and here we are,” Needham, a former programmer and now IMDb's ebullient CEO, told Mashable. “It’s all part of our vision to engage of our customers wherever they happen to be.”
On Tuesday, those apps are getting a significant upgrade(Opens in a new window), Mashable can also reveal, with some cool new features.
“The one I am personally most excited about, which I expect to use obsessively, is our new iOS 'times' feature which makes it trivially easy to plan a movie outing and conveniently buy tickets based on the criteria that matter most to movie lovers,” Needham said.
The "times" feature is based on various factors, including the time customers want to leave for the theater, when they want the movie to start or end, and the movie’s genre, MPAA rating or IMDb user rating. Other new features include “watch” icons that help customers find which movies and TV shows can be watched immediately, and where; and "favorite theaters," enabling customers to see showtimes at their preferred haunts highlighted throughout the app.
These are in addition to IMDb mobile features growing in popularity like "X-Ray(Opens in a new window)," a throwback to IMDb's original “who IS that actor?” mission.
As Needham explains: “If you’re watching on a device, and somebody walks into the scene and you wonder who they are, you simply tap the screen, and up pops the head shots of everyone in view.” Tap a headshot, and voilà -- you're taken to that performer’s profile.
Ticketing is available through a partnership with Fandango, as it has been for more than a year.
IMDb's 100 million downloads milestone is a testament to its evolution. It's almost unheard of that over 24 years -- a span that has seen the rise and fall of hundreds of sexier online brands -- that this one site could defend its place as the go-to for an actor's resume, a film's distributor, a TV show's cast or any combination of entertainment and celebrity news and information.
But there's a reason for that.
Like parent company Amazon, IMDb likes to "stay a couple of steps ahead" of customers, Needham said.