What is the history of IMDb?

IMDb was launched as a movie database on the Usenet group, "rec.arts.movies," in 1990 and it moved to the web in 1993. IMDb originated with a Usenet posting by a British film fan and computer programmer entitled "Those Eyes," about actresses who had beautiful eyes. Other people who possessed related interests soon responded with additions or different lists of their own.

An actors list was started, and a director's list. Shortly after, an actress list was initiated, and a man named Steve Hammond began gathering and merging character names for both. By late 1990, the list included almost 10,000 movies and television series associated with actors and actresses appearing in them. In October 1990, Needham created and posted a collection of Unix shell scripts which could be used to search the four lists, and this is how the IMDb database came to fruition.