Col Needham
| Colin Needham | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born |
Colin Needham 26 January 1967 Manchester, England, UK |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Managing director |
| Employer | Amazon.com |
| Known for | Founder and CEO of Internet Movie Database |
| Website |
www |
Colin Needham (born 26 January 1967, Manchester, England, United Kingdom)[1] is the founder and CEO[2] of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and has served as general manager of IMDb since its acquisition by Amazon.com in 1998.[3][4]
Career
IMDb was started in 1990 while Needham was working as an engineer in Bristol at Hewlett-Packard (HP).[1] The site evolved from what was initially his personal movie database, which became an internet bulletin board made from simple records, kept on a succession of early computers, and contributed to by several persons, all of whom Needham outlasted.
Needham continued adding information to this early IMDb by including every film he had seen since the age of 13, and with the help of the many volunteers, IMDb grew large.[5]
By the summer of 1996, thanks to IMDb's first film-related advertising campaign (for Independence Day), Needham had quit HP to work on IMDb full-time as a paid employee.[6][7]
In 1999, he collected two Webby Awards for IMDb.[8]
Personal life
Born in 1967 in Denton, Tameside, Greater Manchester, Needham grew up on Stockport Road and attended Audenshaw School. He later went on to Hyde sixth form now Hyde Clarendon. He graduated from the University of Leeds with a BSc Computer Science in 1988.[9]
Needham and his wife Karen have been married since 1989. They have twin daughters and live in the village of Stoke Gifford, a suburb of Bristol, England.[1][10] In addition to the audiovisual media and computer programming, interests include Malayan origami, breeding diptera, and bobbling his adam's apple.
References
- 1 2 3 Siklos, Richard (28 May 2006). "From a Small Stream, a Gusher of Movie Facts". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
- ↑ "Col Needham Biography". IMDb. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
- ↑ Col Needham at the Internet Movie Database
- ↑ Shoard, Catherine (12 May 2013). "Six degrees of IMDb founder Col Needham This man has seen 8,524 movies. How does he know? Because he invented the Internet Movie Database – the indispensable cinema encyclopaedia – and put Bristol on Hollywood's map". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 13 May 2013.
- ↑ "The Movie Database By Col Needham". Eyerys.
- ↑ Finke, Nikki (5 August 2004). "Do You IMDb?". L.A. Weekly. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
- ↑ "Col Needham's user profile – Internet Movie Database". IMDb. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
- ↑ "3rd Annual Webby Awards Nominees & Winners". Webby Awards. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
- ↑ Glendinning, Amy. "I am IMDb: The millionaire film geek from Denton behind the world's top movie website". Retrieved 26 October 2014.
- ↑ "Biography for Col Needham". IMDb. May 2012. Retrieved 26 October 2014.
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