Col Needham

Col Needham
Born Colin Needham
(1967-01-26) 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.imdb.com/name/nm1000000

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]

References

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