The answers to all of these questions are in the linked article.

But, just to save you the bother:

a) one guy started it, but it is not a one-man show, nor has it ever really been b) the data was sourced (Wikipedia-style, you might say) on Usenet, back in the pre-WWW days. Since then, the number of sources has multiplied. c) it goes to Amazon, who bought the IMDB back in '98. d) Of course not. He's a VP at Amazon. There is a staff (of unspecified size) working on IMDB.

You're forgetting the outcry there was for taking the USENET posts into a closed system. Similar to what happened with CDDB:

1. get users to submit a bunch of content to you in an open system for free

2. close the system and claim ownership of the database that your users helped create

3. profit!

I fondly remember those days when the entire database is distributed on Usenet. I have written a editor macro to "join" the tables to generate the full detail data of every movie. Of course when the IMDb website has launched, I have switched to their query web page.

Thanks, I skimmed it towards the end after it rambled a bit. Also, thank God for Readability.

No, it's not. I was reading about IMDB a couple of days back, back when they were starting out there were many editors (like wikipedia) and that was part of the reason they went with the Amazon buyout, so they could pay everyone for their work. In fact, in this article it says the same:

"...asked if the sale had made him and his group of volunteers rich..."

They have an office in the Sherman Oaks Galleria, though I don't know what they do there. I suspect it's probably people who process the submitted information and work with the studios on ad sales and so on.

No info about the current number of employees, but the article states that "in 1996, IMDb was managed by a group of 20 volunteers. IMDb became a company in 1996 and was sold to Amazon in 1998 He's now the Chief Executive of IMDb and his role is to oversee future strategy and make sure his creation stays true to its roots."

> his role is to oversee future strategy and make sure his creation stays true to its roots.

Which is why being bought out by Amazon is about as good as it gets. They usually find a good way to manage the post acquisition period, most other companies botch that completely.

Not generally true in that era, though. Alexa and IMDB, yes. Junglee, Planetall/Shoptheweb, Exchange, Live Bid, Bibliofind, Accept, etc - mostly dead. Good list of Amazon acqs/investments at http://tctechcrunch.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/amazon.png

Depends how successful the sites were I guess, if IMDB started going backwards I'm sure it would have ended up the same as those properties.

I think having the founder still working there and not jumping ship as soon as some vesting period is over is a good advertisement for being acquired by amazon. Also it's still it's own site, could have easily been rolled into amazon in an attempt to push more DVD sales over the years.