A website or online service isn’t truly a phenomenon until it spawns a multitude of copycats.
Take Letterboxd, the popular movie website. Letterboxd describes itself as “a global social network for grass-roots film discussion and discovery.”
Letterboxd users share their opinions on movies they’ve seen, create lists and collections of films, and find and follow fellow movie lovers. The website launched in October 2011. And earlier this month, Canadian investment firm Tiny bought a majority stake in Letterboxd. (See articles by Variety and the New York Times.)
Others have taken notice of the success Letterboxd has had and have launched similar websites for other interests.
A quick search of Google shows a host of copycats. There’s a Letterboxd for video games (Backloggd), TV shows (Serialzd), anime (AniList) and music (Musicboard). There’s even a Letterboxed for beer (Untappd).
I’m sure there are many more similar websites out there.
One of the limitations of Letterboxd is that it doesn’t cover TV series or miniseries. That’s limiting in a world where the lines between movies and TV shows are blurring. Letterboxd has plans to add TV content at some point.
Ironically, Letterboxd says it’s been called “Goodreads for movies.” Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. Amazon.com bought Goodreads in March 2013.
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