I mean, everyone wants to know what I look like now, right? How annoying is it to go to a person's profile and be met with the blank "No Photo Available" message?
Very.
So I happily created some profile pictures and go through the steps of adding one. Everything is going along swimmingly until I get to the final step and see:
Gimme Money
What!?
Come on. Even Google's pathetic image space is a Gig. You can upload photos to just about any other site, so why does a majorly ad-supported site require you to pay money to add an image to your own profile?
It seems as though someone has failed to inform these media guys that the interwebs are free.
...most of the time.
When you learn this lesson, IMDb, feel free to use one of these for my profile:
Some IMDb Profile Pictures
~Luke Holzmann
Your Media Production Mentor
5 comments :
Free as in speech, not free as in beer.
I googled "open source imdb", and it looks like some people are working on it.
You might want to read this, especially see the second to the last paragraph:
http://www.imdb.com/help/show_leaf?photoswhypay
Hope this helps
Col Needham,
IMDb founder & managing director
Jonathan,
Eh, the internet might not even have free speech <smile>. And I like the "free as in beer" aspects of the internet. Cool tip about people working on a more "open source" type IMDb. Thanks!
Col,
Wow, I didn't expect to actually have someone from IMDb swing by. How cool! Thanks so much!
And thanks for the link, it does explain a lot. In fact, I'm not surprised about any of the points on that page.
However, for people's own profiles and their own videos, it would be nice to have that feature. But I see why you don't.
My rant was partially in jest. Partially <smile>.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment!
~Luke
35 bucks may be a "nominal fee" for you Mr. Col " I'm already a millionaire" Needham. But for the rest of us starving and struggling actor folk, an extra $35 is harder and harder to come by. I understand charging a fee...just don't understand why its so expensive. But I guess that's capitalism for you. Too bad Luke got so star struck by a brush with Mr. Opportunity that he abandoned much of his cause.
Anon, did you read the link? There are actually legit reasons for the requirement... especially since IMDB is one of the main sources for information about protected copyrighted material. But, while partially in jest--I definitely didn't expect any kind of response, my point does remain: For personal profiles, uploading images is a "no, duh" feature and it's lame that it's not free. On the other hand, $35 to upload your images and such isn't all that much. It's a couple months of WoW. And if you're serious about promoting yourself/your film... that's a small price to pay to get your mug on the "go-to" place for film information.
~Luke
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