The popular web service for movie and TV info known as the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) has just arrived for Android phones in the form of a new mobile application. Like its iPhone sibling, which launched six months prior, the Android application has an optimized user interface for the small screen of mobile devices. Within the app, you can search for movie and TV info, actors’ bios, crew info, listings, reviews, trailers and anything else you could find via its desktop-sized website for PCs. It also takes advantage of Android-specific features, including its option menus and voice search capabilities.
Along with the launch of the mobile application, IMDb is also announcing an initiative called “IMDb Everywhere,” which appears to be just a fancy name for the addition of “like” and “share” buttons across its website.
Android App: Like the iPhone App, Except with Voice Search
IMDb, owned by Amazon, Inc., has expanded over the years to be much more than its name implies. It’s not just a “database” of movie information anymore – it’s a one-stop-shop for everything related to the entertainment industry. The site indexes data on all movies, TV shows and everyone related to a project, including bios, work histories and photos, but it also serves as an online TV guide, a place to watch trailers (for both past, current and upcoming films), a movie listings service, a box office results tracker and a tracking tool for DVD and Blu-ray release dates.
The Android app doesn’t disappoint in this regard – it appears to offer everything its iPhone counterpart does, but with the addition of voice search too.
The other interesting item being announced today is the “IMDb Everywhere” initiative. According to the company founder and CEO, Col Needham, IMDb customers want to engage with the site’s content “anywhere they are – from IMDb.com to their mobile phone to Facebook and Twitter.”
Along those lines, the company is officially announcing the addition of “Like” and “Share” buttons which now appear across the site (and within its Android app), allowing users to publish their preferences on both Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The “Like” buttons in particular take advantage of Facebook’s Open Graph, the social network’s new and ambitious platform to socialize the entire Web. When you “like” something on IMDb, be that an actor, movie, TV show, etc., that data then populates your Facebook profile page, publicly associating you with the object of your affection.
In addition to the new social sharing measures, the company also mentioned its recently launched interactive Twitter account, @imdbbot, an automated service which responds to user questions about anything the site houses in its massive database. Unfortunately, the Twitter bot can’t answer free-form questions like “who was the lead in that movie about the vampires that came out last year?,” but instead can provide basic info about a movie, TV show or actor and a link to IMDb when tweeted in the proper format. (Details here).