SXSW Interactive '09: IMDB To Get Busy Streaming

South by Southwest, Austin’s booming film and music festival isn’t just about the legendary music and film. This week of the festival includes an entire week devoted to interactive media, assembling the brightest minds in emerging technology for SXSW Interactive. And, like any good interactive event, bloggers, YouTubers and Tweet Heads are helping break some interesting news for the interactive world. So much so that Wired reported AT&T has been feeling the heat from iPhone addicts in need of better service. The interactive festival is also running their own Twitter page here.

Panel topics have been as wide-ranging as branding beyond four dimensions presented by Jamie Monberg (above) to the future of social networking posted on the official SXSW video page here.

Perhaps the biggest piece of news to come from Austin came today as IMDB announced a plan to stream one button video for every one of its 1.3 million titles in the database. IMDB founder Col Needham

announced the goal to a packed crowd of interactive attendees while speaking on the history of the company. An ambitious goal, IMDB would need to work out an agreement with all content providers. Additionally, a huge question becomes is this a relevant undertaking when Hulu, iTunes, Netflix, and many cable networks are already streaming their own content on their own sites?

The announcement has provoked Twitter responses from “bring it,” by bryan_moss to, “that could be great, or total crap,” by extralife.

IMDB’s announcement has perhaps been the most compelling piece of SXSWi news for web video thus far. The company will still have to rastle with its inconsistent definition of what exactly is a web series.