The best Casey Lichtenstein rendition will become the avatar for my next web series and the winner will be promoted on the new site with a link to their site and a special thanks.
Above right: Col Needham, IMDb founder and managing director (original photo courtesy of winni3)
Over a year and a half ago I wrote an article for The Guardian entitled “Online-only shows don’t rate at IMDb.” At the time, there were very few web series listed on the site; Ask A Ninja was amongst the few. Today there are dozens of web series listed on IMDb, but they continue to be listed as TV Series. At SXSW this year I asked Col Needham, IMDb founder and managing director, for an update in person on whether they plan to start a category for web series.
The answer is a resounding yes. In the second or third quarter of this year (anytime between April 1st and September 30th), IMDb will roll out the ability to tag a submission as either a web series or an individual (one-off) online video.
Click on the player below for an embarrassingly mediocre audio copy of Needham’s reply.
(N.B. I was asked to speak loud because the microphone wasn’t functioning properly.)
This is big news… much bigger than learning that IMDb will also begin streaming videos (yay?). Of course, the announcement will beg more questions on what credentials are necessary for acceptance to the database under those categories. When I spoke with Needham a year and a half ago, he mentioned the following credentials for submitting a web series:
I went to a meeting the other day and while I was waiting in the lobby a bunch of people started talking about Twitter… so, naturally, I couldn’t help but butt in.
When I told them I was on Twitter and that I just Twittered 5 minutes ago from that very location, they preceded to ask question after question…
“What do you Twitter about?”
“How many times do you Twitter a day?”
“Do you HAVE to follow everyone?”
(It was kind of sweet, actually, because when the executive I was there to meet came down to the lobby I was surrounded by a swarm of Twitter groupies.)
Over the past 2 years, I’ve been thinking of Twitter mostly as a marketing tool – and part of that is developing an audience WITHOUT marketing, but instead sharing links and anecdotes pertinent to the subject you would normally want to advertise. But, after talking to these n00bs in the lobby about how I use Twitter I realized something deeper… Twitter is my water cooler.
Twitter is the place I go to when I’m not in the headspace to work. The place I go when I need a break. The place I get my news, gossip and information about my friends. And, as someone who works from home, Twitter filled a real gap in my social life (anti-social life?).
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