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Who owns TMDb? Is the db and discussion board here to stay?
posted by R3zMeSTAFFMOD on March 10, 2017 at 12:20 PM
First a bit of a rant (and sorry if this is not the right place to post this) As many others I loved discussing movies and tv series on imdb and was outraged they deleted this part of modern culture. I'd go as far as saying they had no right to do this. Movies are part of our culture like books are, and they kind of did something similar to book burning. I have learned so much about specific movies and about movies in general, understanding and appreciating them better. The flimsy excuses about trolls is silly - and even if true they just let the trolls win? There are certain network effects that lead to one or few sites to have a decisive advantage of having enough users that the user submitted content (votes, reviews, discussions, explanations) make it near impossible for other competitors to succeed. Now IMDb is basically useless to me, and I hope other websites stop linking to it.
So tmdb looks great and I love they added a discussion section. The traffic isn't near what imdb was yet, but it looks promising so I'm hopeful and thankful for tmdb to take up the slack.
But who owns tmdb? Could tmdb be sold and then the discussion be closed down in a few years or a decade? Afaik imdb started as independent too and was bought by amazon and now this. How is tmdb financed and what are the commercial interests behind it?
Reply by Marr 🇳🇱
on March 10, 2017 at 3:53 PM
Boards aren't going anywhere! Just read among some of the older threads and new features. Travis has been working his ass off
Reply by R3zMe
on March 10, 2017 at 4:48 PM
Ah thank you for the links!
Reply by bratface
on April 23, 2017 at 6:55 PM
But Marr, you didn't answer the main question, 'Who owns/finances TMDb'? Is it Amazon?
Reply by CountJohn
on April 23, 2017 at 10:04 PM
Doubt it. This seems too under the radar. There isn't much publicity aside from word of mouth from ex-IMDBers, which is why it isn't that crowded at the moment.
Reply by bratface
on April 23, 2017 at 10:19 PM
The reason I suggested Amazon was because one of the emails I've received from TMDb had 'amazon' in part of the address. Which I thought was kind of weird?
Reply by Travis Bell
on April 24, 2017 at 12:07 AM
Haha, not quite
TMDb is built using many AWS (Amazon Web Services) technologies and one of them is their email service. AWS is huge and powers millions and millions of projects and services.
Reply by bratface
on April 24, 2017 at 2:34 AM
So then Travis, 'Who owns/finances TMDb'? Is it a secret?
Reply by PT 100
on April 24, 2017 at 4:49 AM
This will be a bit OT, but I think it's unfair that IMDb gets a Wikipedia entry, but tmdb doesn't, even though the latter is mentioned in other Wikipedia articles.
Reply by Travis Bell
on April 24, 2017 at 10:35 AM
No, it's not a secret. I am employed by Fan TV to work on TMDb full time and have been since 2010. I started TMDb in 2008 but it grew very quickly and by the end of 2009, I was not only having trouble paying for it on my own, but also finding any meaningful time to actually work on features while still holding down a fill time job. This is all I have done now for 7 years.
Reply by Travis Bell
on April 24, 2017 at 10:35 AM
Give this discussion a read from start to finish. It will answer your questions. Bit of a long one, but probably worth the time.
Reply by bratface
on April 24, 2017 at 2:47 PM
Thanks Travis. I followed a trail that leads to TiVo (Rovi).
Reply by R3zMe
on April 24, 2017 at 3:38 PM
Thanks for the info Travis :) So is this a "good" owner for our "purposes"? I wish there was a truly benevolent institution to finance and safeguard social media and culturally important institutions. This corporate owned public sphere has it's pro's as well of course, but overall I wish there was some stability and mental hygiene for our digital life.
And sorry Travis for this cantankerous thread and putting you on the hotseat :P
Reply by Travis Bell
on April 24, 2017 at 5:18 PM
I would like to point to my work as an indication that I certainly think so. I've not only been given the creative freedom to run TMDb how I see fit but also the resources to actually keep it up and running. And just so you understand what that means, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with only a single salary so most of that is the cost of operations. Don't forget, we deliver our service to over 100 million users a month and many more times that if you include the customers of our customers. TMDb is no small project and you don't get to this size and scale without the need of some real and stable financial backing. As I've already stated, I've been doing this for 7 years now with no plans on slowing down. I feel like a lot of the time I'm just getting started
Reply by Sixties Holdout
on April 24, 2017 at 6:10 PM
It's a rather complicated corporate relationship tree that can be gleaned from this article if one bothers to go deep into it:
http://www.multichannel.com/news/distribution/rovi-seals-deal-tivo/407573
Basically, TV listings provider Rovi has gobbled up several properties, including the TiVo DVR and Fan TV (and thus TMDb). Let's hope they never start mucking around with TMDb the way they have with TiVo. Sorry if the following gets a bit OT, but I think it's useful to see what Rovi has done to TiVo.
TiVo's TV and movie listings/program descriptions used to be unbiased and informative, and only rarely incorrect. Now that Rivo has integrated its own listings/descriptions into TiVo, things can get really messy. The TV program/movie descriptions often sound like they are hype from the producer's PR firm rather than objective descriptions; and the hyped description often does not actually match the star ratings for movies (1 to 4 stars for quality). Sometimes a 2-star movie, which is pretty bad, will get a glowing description--absolutely ridiculous!
And there is now a much higher rate of inaccuracy of information, sometimes including an incorrect TV episode title/description. For some TV series, they don't even bother with an episode description, just a generic blurb about the entire series (e.g., for the Andy Griffith Show, "A small-town sheriff raises his son . . . .").
And when Comcast moves programming from one channel number to another, it sometimes takes seemingly forever for TiVo to catch up. In some cases, the programming has moved to a different channel number, but the listings guide still shows all the program information on the former, now dead, channel; and no listings on the live channel. It makes it necessary to set up a zillion manual recordings instead of sticking with wishlist auto recording or season pass auto recording. What a pain!
So TMDb will probably stay okay as long as Rovi keeps its corporate paws off of it.
Reply by Travis Bell
on April 24, 2017 at 6:19 PM
I really can't say much about that as I have nothing to do with that business group but I do know that TiVo (as in the set top box business) had to switch data providers for legal reasons. I know they are working very hard on improving their product so hopefully that is starting to show.
I work from home ( in Calgary) so I'm not very versed in a lot of that stuff. I visit the U.S. every few months but other than that, I'm pretty much in a silo.