Social Media for Cinephiles: Goodshows
I was disappointed by the shuttering of GetGlue (briefly tvtag) back in the day. The physical stickers were a nice touch and I loved the gamification of pop culture consumption. With the launch of Goodshows, “a social network for TV geeks and movie fanatics,” I believe I have found a viable replacement.
When I was an HBO rep back in college, it was fun to collect stickers that proved to be a physical representation of episodic premiers. The iPad that they had loaned me soon became encased in these relics. The app had me hooked and soon it bled over into my fascination with cinema. I spend a lot of time in theaters — and I would earn things for this hobby as well.
While I never took advantage of the more social elements inside of GetGlue, the idea of a social network for those who loved TV and film as much as me was appealing. When they quit providing the option to receive stickers in the mail, then sold and rebranded to tvtag and replaced most of their “stickers” with GIFs, the end was near.
Stubz and @BpaintMovies
At one point, when development for Campstake was hitting snag after snag (prior to our pivot), my mind began to wander. I explored other ideas of “social” platforms for my interests and hobbies. This time, I ideated around something I had been doing for a few years now: collecting ticket stubs. At first I thought of keeping it exclusive to movie ticket stubs — providing a community for friends and enthusiasts to share with each other which movies they had seen, and what they thought of them. But then I branched out and entertained the idea of including concert goers and sports fans… hitting other large caches of pop culture that involved being admitted via tickets.
Users would keep a gallery of their ticket stubs as a backup for any physical copies they had. Integrating with sites like Fandango and Moviepilot, and providing basic “watch list” functions were all a part of the brainstorm but when reality hit, I knew that I couldn’t drive the development of something like that when our own “Yelp for the outdoors” was unable to come into fruition. I settled for something I knew full-well: Twitter.
@BpaintMovies was born. I thought I could review all of the movies I had seen within the social network’s infamous 140-character limits and retweet/engage with all of the movie-related Twitter content without spamming my regular account. This went on for a little while and then I stumbled upon a few accounts that appeared to pick up where GetGlue had left off: Goodshows and Telfie. Telfie was going the route of picking up exactly where GetGlue left off while Goodshows was taking a different approach — reviews at the core. I was excited as the prospect of both.
Come November of this last year, I was offered the chance to beta test Goodshows — they had gotten to a stable point in development faster than Telfie, and I was thrilled at the chance to try it out.
On January 15, they launched in the App Store. The following day, they were “hunted.” Game on.
First Glance: Home
The Goodshows Home feed is slick. It’s minimalist and simple and highlights a few key things: the rating that someone has provided, an excerpt from their review, a large still from the production, title, duration, genre and then the ability to interact with the review — you can like, comment, share and add to your “Watchlist.”
All in all, the Home feed does exactly what it needs to do. It’s simple to navigate and the content is easy to consume.
Watchlist
Again, the Watchlist is clean and it’s interface is fairly intuitive. Reminiscent of Todo or Whiteboard, it’s all gesture-based. Swipe right and it indicates that you have watched the film, prompting you to review it. Swipe left and it deletes the film from your Watchlist. Up in the right corner, you can add new items to your Watchlist.
Writing a Review
When you opt to write a review, by pressing the pencil icon, it brings up a list of the most popular films and TV shows for the time being. Once you choose this, you’re provided a small form — write your bit, select 1–5 stars, indicate if you’d like to share on Facebook or Twitter, then post.
Notifications
Depending on the app, this can be a pain point. For now, with its limited community, notifications aren’t a nuisance — but very exciting. You’ll be notified when someone follows you, adds a comment to one of your reviews, likes one of your reviews or adds a film or TV show that you have reviewed to their Watchlist (i.e. “watchlisted”).
Me
The profile is an intriguing piece of Goodshows. This is where the nitty gritty social network-type features come into play. You have a profile picture; a tally of your reviews, followers, following; your bio; all of your reviews and a list-type view of all the items you’ve reviewed in the app.
Within this, you can see full versions of your reviews —
Bottom Line
V.1 of the Goodshows app is pretty solid. It allows me to house all of my reviews in a microblog-type format and share them onto Facebook and Twitter. It allows me to connect with like-minded individuals and chat about movies and TV shows. It allows me to view others’ opinions on movies and TV shows before selecting what I’d like to watch next and it allows me to manage a Watchlist, which is converted piece by piece, into reviews as I watch these productions.
In essence, aside from providing me with stickers to slap onto things, Goodshows is a great replacement for GetGlue and a foundation for the idea I wish I had acted upon. They have a great team, a good vision and a fantastic head start into the space. They are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. Check out their origin story here.
So don’t just Netflix and chill. Netflix, chill and review.
What I’d Like to See
A Better TV Show Tracker. The current way that Goodshows handles TV shows makes complete sense. You put it into your Watchlist and as you watch each episode, you mark that you have done so and they ask you to provide a review. It’s a basic play to get more content loaded onto the platform, however, moving forward I want to see an evolution of this feature. Instead of making us review each episode in order to track your progress in the app, simply allow us to track our progress in the app. It could function like the Watchlist does for films now — if you have watched it, swipe to the right and then the meter moves to show your progressions. You could bookmark what episode you are on so that you can pick up where you left off on Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime Video.
A Real-Time Conversation Piece. Ironically enough, I’d like to see the addition of the feature that I never took advantage of in GetGlue. If my girlfriend and I are watching the Bachelor, I’d like to be able to tap into the conversations occurring around the program (since you connect via Twitter anyway — I know their API doesn’t always play nicely, so this could just be a “nice to have”) and engage in-app.
A Collectable Element. The stickiest piece of GetGlue, pun intended, was the ability to “unlock” stickers when you watched shows as they progressed, caught new movies in the theater, etc. I’d like to see the “Me” section gain depth via gamification. Whether it’s points based on real-time activations (the premiers, finales, etc.) or amounts of reviews, or something else entirely, I’d like to see an added dimension to the social element. This would also open up the possibility for content partnerships and potential avenues for monetization.
Great job, guys! Can’t wait to follow along as Goodshows expands.
