This is a little advice I would like to give to you.
You are, by my standards, the “best” movie site/aplication on-line.
For me you are as good for static movie info as google is for searching stuff.
And although you have a pretty rudimentary voting system it does the trick for me. And as I don’t have that much time to go to the cinema, my decision process usually takes me there to check “scores” and then deciding which movie to go. And I’ve also done this by mobile while buying movies I’ve never heard of.
Nevertheless, there are a few things you’re just missing.
I’m not an actor, I don’t aspire to be one nor I care about having my resume there (I have Linkedin for that).
So here’s what I see from my perspective…
Your (lousy) Interface
Your interface just plain sucks. There you have it. It’s so fuc*ing useless.
Whenever I go to your site I totally ignore the top, left and right content of your site.
I’ve been using it for years and the only things I really use are the search and the movie info.
So why don’t you invest a little on making this a better experience for me?
Am I the only one that sees this?
Someday and just for kicks I’ll make you a drawing on how it could be.
(Hint: I go there to see movie info)
Let’s get Social already
This one is getting so fuc*ing obvious that it almost pains me to have to say it. Why … oh why don’t you have a social network?
And I don’t mean to your main core business (?) of movie professionals but to the average John Doe like me.
You could help create a community instead of simply have unrelated registered users.
I would like to see what movies my friends rate and who hasn’t still seen “that” movie instead of calling all of them to see who want’s to go see it. I would also like to see who has the movie on dvd that I haven’t seen. And I would like to see it on the movie page.
(Hint: how long will you stay in web 1.0?)
My movie list
Why in the hell would I lose my time and add my 724+ dvd movie list one by one?
Is it that hard allow me to upload somehow my movie list?
And then, even if I did, having seen hundreds of movies … How am I or anyone supposed to find them on “MyMovies” without a search function? And what’s up with that interface?
How about some degree of integration with your mommy Amazon? If I buy it there… couldn’t I import it somehow? And since we’re on it … why can’t I import my Amazon movie listings?
I don’t really see where you’re trying to go with this.
(Hint: ever heard of Ajax? Web 2.0?)
Blog integration tools
This is another one. You really could lose those horrible flash blog integration tools and do something better. Really: they … suck … big … time!
I’m sorry to say it but for me… you really don’t get it. And it’s not like there aren’t good examples out there.
(Hint: ever heard of javacript? php? whatever?)
One aditional feature
One thing that I really think that is overlooked are actors roles. Why? Well there simply isn’t any rating system out there. So why don’t you help us out and create an individual actor ratings movie by movie? Now there’s something that would be very cool.
A movie can be bad and still have an amazing performance.
(Hint: Are the oscars fair? IMDb awards?)
Open up and let me in baby
Well … if you don’t wanna do it then at least let us John Does do it.
Why don’t you provide us with an API? Haven’t you seen it?
Everyone else is doing it and the world instead of stopping … it evolved further.
Bottom line
You are already a big company and a reference online … but you could be so much more.
(Hint: The day you decide to create an API will be a memorable one.)
where do I put my name? I wanna sign this letter too.
And I so fucking want that API.
Great post! I’ll sign it too!
I second that.
Just two points:
- I do use a lot of those links in the left sidebar and the website has a lot of hidden features.
- While you don’t have a public API, you can always integrate using their plain text files available by FTP (http://www.imdb.com/interfaces#plain). They only update them weekly and there’s some work needed if you want to optimize your process using the diffs.
And after that, you have some limitations about how and where you can use that data. This is probably why they might not go with a public API, they’re a bit over zealous about their own data.