Welcome

Introduction and Thanks

Welcome to the 30th edition of our annual letter of thanks and celebration for IMDb's data contributor community and for all our customers worldwide.

I am IMDb's Founder & CEO. IMDb launched in October 1990, and therefore we will be celebrating our 35th anniversary in 2025; this letter only became possible in 1995 as it was the first full year where we could count data contributions centrally. As you can no doubt imagine, it has been quite a journey over 35 years and 30 letters. Today we have record numbers of customers accessing IMDb from all over the world and across so many different devices and languages.

I often have the privilege of speaking about IMDb in public and I usually begin by showing ourvideo sizzle reelto provide a glimpse of IMDb's impact. We could not have this impact without you, our contributors & customers, and so we offer you our deepest appreciation. Thank you to everyone who has contributed any factual data, rated a title, written a review, created a list, voted in a community poll, added a video reaction, marked an item as helpful, installed our apps, engaged with us on social media, recommended IMDb to anyone else, or improved IMDb in any other way.

To learn more about contributing data, please visit ourContributor Zoneand where you can also view ahistory of past lettersthere. Our team members Ramsey and Jay co-wrote this letter with me again; we are a small part of a larger worldwide team whose work this letter also represents. Thank you also to the IMDb team for your hard work, dedication, and customer obsession.

The Numbers

Growth in 2024 has been remarkable, thanks to your contributions. IMDb now includes:

• Over 22 million titles (4 million+ added in 2024 or 10,000+ new titles per day)
• Over 14 million names (925,000+ added in 2024)
• Over 212 million filmography credits (17 million+ added in 2024)
• Almost 8.5 million user reviews (500,000+ added in 2024)
• Close to 645 million data items in the core database

These numbers represent countless hours of dedication from contributors like you, ensuring IMDb remains the world's most comprehensive and reliable entertainment database. Thank you.

Additional statistics are available in thepress roomand they are updated quarterly. Note that recent previous editions of this letter did not exclude merged names from the name count; this error has now been corrected and the numbers here match those in the press room.

The dynamicContributor Leaderboardenables us to count submissions right up until the end of the year and anyone with more than 100 approved items in 2024 can discover their own position in the rankings. Across December we have been updating a running total with the final version published early on 1 January 2025. I always look forward to seeing my own ranking and I am on-track to be inside the Top 100 again, possibly even in the Top 75.

2024 Progress

... From a contributor perspective by Ramsey and Jay on The Contributor Team...

2024 has been another extraordinary year for the IMDb contributor community. Thanks to your incredible efforts, IMDb remains the go-to source for movie, TV, and entertainment information. Whether you're submitting credits, crafting plot outlines, or sharing reviews, your contributions help keep IMDb accurate, engaging, and constantly evolving. Here's a look back at what we've accomplished together and some exciting updates from this year.

First and foremost, 2024 saw significant behind-the-scenes upgrades to our contribution systems. We prioritized improving performance, stability, and reliability while bolstering security and privacy protections. By adopting modern technology standards, we've not only reduced system risks but also ensured even better protection of your data'making your experience smoother and more secure than ever.

This year also marked the official launch of a more streamlined contribution experience within IMDbPro, now available to all customers. The success of this interface led to its expansion into other areas, starting with FAQs on IMDb. We're excited to share that more data types will adopt this upgraded interface in 2025, bringing enhanced functionality and ease of use to even more contributors.

Throughout 2024, we tackled and resolved numerous bugs that impacted the contributor experience. For example, we fixed an issue with the 'career-gap' warning flagging even when credits were being added to people who had recently worked on a TV episode, and addressed a bug that caused certain words or phrases to be incorrectly removed from episode title submissions. Your feedback played a key role in identifying and resolving these issues.

Last but not least, we refined the Heights contribution form to provide clearer guidance on our preferred formatting. These updates are designed to save you time and increase the likelihood that your submissions are approved on the first try.

As we look ahead to 2025, we're excited to continue working alongside our incredible contributor community. From all of us on IMDb's Contribution Team, thank you for your passion, dedication, and invaluable contributions this year. We wish you a restful holiday season and a fantastic New Year!

... From a customer perspective by Col Needham...

I constantly marvel at the progress of technology in terms of how we can serve our contributors and customers compared to the time of our launch in 1990. Similarly, storytellers can now engage their audiences in ways which would have looked like something from a science fiction movie just 35 years ago. Today we are grateful for the opportunity to connect audiences with storytellers. IMDb not only fosters a global appreciation for entertainment but also supports the production process through IMDbPro, enhancing the entire entertainment world.

Throughout 2024, we have made significant progress in adapting IMDb for the future. We are on track to complete our migration to the new technology platform in 2025. This upgrade will enable us to introduce new features and support further growth, benefiting our customers worldwide. You can read about the background to this in the same section of the2023 letter.

We make incremental changes almost daily on the site, and we are continuously experimenting to enhance the customer experience or to improve the speed and accessibility of our pages. As is the Amazon tradition, we start with the customer and work backwards to determine what we need to build next via our customer research team. Some of the larger highlights from 2024 include: updatedvideo pagesin February;emoji reactionsacross web and apps in April; a redesignedlists experience,which has resulted in a huge growth in the number of customers creating / sharing lists, as well as improved quality in those lists surfaced across IMDb; the return ofcharacter name search;updatedphotos and galleriesin May; a modernizedfilmography search,which is now the most powerful and versatile in IMDb's history; a replacementname full credits experiencein June, which is integrated into advanced title search for increased customization; the launch ofInterestson the web in August, following a successful earlier launch on the apps; modernizedparents guidesanduser reviewsin September; a rebuild ofevents pagesin November, just in time for the start of the new awards season; and finally in December, the initial launch of our updatedprofile (activity) pageswith more to come early in 2025.

For improvements specifically in our mobile apps, please see the release notes for the apps in theiOSandAndroidstores. Some of the larger apps highlights from 2024 include: new Streaming Picks iOS widget in January; addition of list creation and editing on Android in February; Favorite People widget on Interest Pages in March; improved experience of browsing across Interests in April; Interests added to search results in May; Title page widget improvements in June; search bar added to home screen in August; improved movie showtimes and ticketing experience in November; initial launch of an updated profile page experience in December, with more improvements coming in 2025.

We made further improvements toIMDbProandBox Office Mojofor our entertainment industry professional customers, including a simplified sign-up process and a new partnership with SAG-AFTRA to add verified union membership badges to name pages.

We were pleased to be able to support industry events and organizations throughout 2024 as detailed acrossAwards Central,Festival Central,IMDb Originals,andPress Room.

For more on 2024, please see our annualBest Ofsection (as a follow-up to my 15,000th movie as reported last year, see myTop 10 of 2024where #1 is my 16,000th movie). We were pleased to grant moreSTARmeter awardsto a further set of talented people, based on their popularity amongst IMDb customers. You can follow us on our various social media channels:TikTok;Facebook;Instagram;X;andYouTube.Thanks as always to ourpoll communityfor creating suchengaging contentfor IMDb customers.

The Future

IMDb now reaches over 250 million monthly customers, spread across almost every country in the world. We are already seeing the benefits of our new technology, which allows people to access IMDb more consistently across devices and languages, with features and content that are relevant, accessible, and increasingly more personalized. We will be building on these foundations across the coming year. We are already welcoming more contributions covering more countries and our local language support is expanding. We are excited to be growing in our 35th anniversary year.

Feedback

Thank you again for all your support across 2024. Ideas and constructive feedback are always welcome viaSprinklr,where you can also propose and vote upon new ideas. This letter itself will be posted toSprinklrif you have any feedback or questions.

If you have 100+ approved contributions, you can check your own position in the contributor rankings via theannual leaderboard.If you are inside the Top 300 contributors, we are offering free access to IMDbPro Premium throughout 2025 as a reflection of our appreciation. We will contact those contributors who qualify with access details soon.Badgesfor the Top 300 contributors will also be awarded early in January.

We wish you a Happy New Year for 2025!

Col Needham
IMDb Founder and CEO
on behalf of the whole worldwide IMDb Team