Why I left Miso for IMDb

When I came to social media in 2010, I quickly found Goodreads as a convenient way of tracking and sharing my reading habits, and was a little surprised that nothing quite as good existed for TV and movies. I knew and had used IMDb, but back then, its coverage of TV episodes seemed to me quite lacking, as did its social functions. Eventually, I settled on Miso as the closest fit for me.

I was pretty happy with Miso, and apathy would have prevented me from looking further afield until in late 2012 they merged their database with theTVDB.com. In the process, they trashed the episode histories of a couple of shows that I follow.

Since then, I’ve reappraised IMDb and think that it’s a better fit for me now. It’s sad to move on and drop the history that I’ve built up on Miso (1160 check ins!) and also to lose a couple of things that IMDb doesn’t have.

I hope that one day something even better comes along.

Here’s the list of features that I would want from such a site; with Goodreads, Miso, and IMDb for comparison:

	Goodreads	Miso	IMDb
Movies	✘	✔	✔
TV episodes	✘	✔	✔
Link separate titles by series	✔	✘	✘
Can rate	✔	✔	✔
Can review	✔	✔	✔
Lists	✔	✘	✔
Facebook integration	✔	✔	✔
Twitter integration	✔	✔	✔
iOS app	✔	✔	✔
Machine recommendations	✔	✘	✔
Friend recommendations	✔	✘	✘
See friends’ updates	✔	✔	✘

Of all these, making and maintaining lists is probably the feature I missed most on Miso, and I’d been keeping a list of what to watch next as a Google document instead. Of the things that IMDb currently lacks, I’d most want to see friends’ updates and be able to give recommendations to and take recommendations from them.

Seenth.at is an effort to build a movie check-in website with Goodreads-like functionality. It’s still under development and looks very promising, but its (deliberate) lack of support for TV shows makes it a non-starter for me, unfortunately.