From its humble beginnings through the dot-com boom and bust, Rotten Tomatoes has weathered many changes. Take a look at our timeline of major events in the ten-year history of RT.
Summer 1998 — UC Berkeley grad Senh Duong is Creative Director at Bay Area web design firm Design Reactor. He searches for reviews of Jackie Chan import movies, to no avail. He spends two weeks designing and coding a solution to the void, and Rotten Tomatoes is born.
August 18, 1998 — RT’s launch date is originally planned to coincide with the release of Rush Hour (63 percent on the Tomatometer), the first Hollywood cross-over of Duong’s idol Jackie Chan. The movie gets pushed to September, but RT goes live anyway. The site gets 100 hits on its first day.
August 19, 1998 — Neil LaBute‘s Your Friends & Neighbors (76 percent on the Tomatometer) is the first movie to be reviewed on Rotten Tomatoes.
1998 — Binh Ngo joins Senh Duong and Bobby Ly at RT full-time, working out of Senh’s apartment in downtown Sacramento. Their daily routine: wake up, eat, write movie news and post reviews, play basketball.
December 11, 1998 — Star Trek: Insurrection (56 percent on the Tomatometer) is the first film to get a Tomatometer rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
1999 — Design Reactor merges with Rotten Tomatoes. Bobby, Senh, and Binh move to Richmond, CA and work out of their apartment. Soon, RT moves into the Design Reactor office in Emeryville, CA which would eventually become the official Rotten Tomatoes headquarters.
2001 — RT officially incorporates and raises $1 million in venture capital, allowing it to survive the dot-com crash.
2001 — The dot-com bubble bursts. The tech industry loses $5 trillion; RT whittles its staff from 20 to 8 to survive the crash.
2003 — The “Certified Fresh” stamp of approval for films with a Tomatometer rating of 75% or higher is born.
2004 — RT is sold to IGN Entertainment. Editors Tim Ryan and Jen Yamato join the staff and begin creating original editorial features and articles.
April 20, 2004 — Jon Stewart mentions Rotten Tomatoes while interviewing Mark Ruffalo on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show..
September 2005 — IGN Entertainment is bought by Fox NewsCorp.
July 23, 2006 — Filmmaker Kevin Smith enters RT’s Forums to argue the financial success of Clerks 2.
April 2007 — Alex Vo joins the editorial staff.
2007 — Rotten Tomatoes moves from its original Emeryville office to IGN headquarters in Brisbane, CA.
October 2007 — New Editor in Chief Matt Atchity signs on, and Ryan Fujitani joins the editorial staff. A new era begins.
December 2007 — Rotten Tomatoes launches internationally, led by Joe Utichi in the UK and Joanna Cohen in Australia.
