Trakt TV Tracking


Tech, Television / Saturday, March 1st, 2014

I’ve spent years documenting my life in almost every way shape and form. Some people value privacy, I apparently am not one of them. I’ve been on-again, off-again, blogging since 1997. I like being able to know what was going on, and what I was doing, at almost any given time in my life. Even if I don’t go back and reminisce. Besides, I don’t do anything in my boring life worth worrying about what “the man” may think.

I had been using Last.FM for a long time to keep track of my music listening habits so when services arrived for TV tracking, I jumped right on board. The problem was, I was using 2 different services which meant checking in at 2 different places every time I watched a single show. Both had pluses and minuses so I just couldn’t make a decision. GetGlue had a better social aspect but GoMiso had the ability to granularly check into specific episodes as well as a way to integrate my check-ins into this site. That was huge.

I persistently made it a few years using both services however the two check-ins just became too overwhelming to the point where sometime last year I just quit. For a while it was quite liberating just watching TV without worrying about opening clunky, sometimes broken, apps but then I realized there was something better. Rather than just check in to shows and movies for the sake of it, why am I not keeping track of what I’m watching? So I found Trakt. I’ve been setting it up over the past few weeks and it’s not perfect but I think it’s a necessary service for someone who watches a ton of TV. I can keep track of what I’ve watched, what I’m watching and what I want to watch in the future. In a world with a thousand channels and a million shows, Trakt helps keep it all organized. It doesn’t have the best way to integrate into this site but hopefully that will come. It also doesn’t have any good, free, iOS apps but their website works real well on the iPad so that’s good enough for now.