In the midst of all the Google/YouTube hullabaloo, I wanted to highlight my favorite website, the Internet Movie Database, or IMDb.
IMDb is a massive directory of film information, from movie quotes to actors' agents' contact information. The content is interconnected such that surfing IMDb becomes its own Kevin Bacon game, where clicking on a movie brings up every actor in it, and clicking on one of the actors brings up every movie they've been in, etc.
The best content on IMDb is its movie and celebrity trivia, both primarily user-generated (and fact-checked by professional staff, similar to Wikipedia). I have even submitted an interesting factoid about a Patrick Swayze line in Point Break that references his earlier work, but I digress.
The CGM aspects of IMDb have been in place since the early days of the site (it has not changed much since the late 1990s), which makes it an early adopter of Web 2.0 methods. Amazon now owns IMDb, given the clear synergies between a movie website with great content and the most popular online store for purchasing DVDs. I presume NetFlix is envious.
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