Ever since I started using Last.fm, I’ve been looking for similar services for other forms of media I intake. Goodreads was an excellent find, providing a lot of similar features geared toward books. It’s fun to integrate “what I’m doing” type lists into my website, but more than that the two services have generated some interesting data on what I like the most. They’ve also led me to new artists and authors I’ve enjoyed, primarily by allowing me to see what my friends have been up to.
I’d been casually looking for a similar service applied to movies. My friend found Flixter a few years back, but the site design was too much like MySpace (think garish multicolor backgrounds). Recently, I noticed XBMC had a plugin for a service called Trakt.tv that scrobbles the movies and TV shows you watch in XBMC to the site, Last.fm style.
It’s still in the early stages, so there aren’t a lot of integrations to other services, and you can only add watched items manually or through XBMC. However, I’ve been pleased with it so far: The site is very simple, listing what you’ve watched and employing a binary love/hate rating system. While it would be a lot more useful to a wider audience if it could submit from non-XBMC players, it’s certainly the best service of its kind I’ve seen so far with a lot of potential.