IMDb continued to expand its functionality. On January 15, 2002, it added a subscription service known as IMDbPro, aimed at entertainment professionals. IMDbPro was announced and launched at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival by Barnaby Dorfman. It provides a variety of services including film production and box office details, a company directory, and the ability of subscribers to add personal information pages.
From 1996 onwards, an annual newsletter email (archived on the website) has been sent from Col Needham to contributors on the first day of each calendar year. The annual newsletter lists various information about the past year on the site, including stats, top contributors tally for the year (the top 300 users, currently; fewer in previous years), and a perspective on the site's progress and future.[33][34][35]
As an additional incentive for users, as of 2003, users identified as one of the "top 100 contributors" of hard data received complimentary free access to IMDbPro for the following calendar year; for 2006 this was increased to the top 150 contributors, and for 2010 to the top 250.[36]
In 2008, IMDb launched their first official foreign-language version with IMDb.de, in German. Also in 2008, IMDb acquired two other companies: Withoutabox[37] and Box Office Mojo.[38]
The website was originally Perl-based, but IMDb no longer discloses what software it uses for reasons of security, apart from mentioning The Apache Software Foundation.[39] In 2010, the site was filtered in China.[40]
In 2016, The IMDb Studio at Sundance was launched, a talk show that is presented on IMDb and YouTube.[41][42]