media checkin

Media check-in is a somewhat controversial concept that refers to a type of virtual check-in post, where the "location" is an item of consumable media such as a book, audio, video, or realtime media such as a radio or TV broadcast.

Criticism

Dilutes the meaning of checkin

checkins referred specifically to explicitly notifying your friends (sometimes followers) that you were at a physical location, typically a venue, as pioneered by Dodgeball and then Foursquare (and copied by Brightkite, Gowalla, Yelp, Facebook, and maybe others like Loopt).

The notion of a "media check-in" is completely artificial, has always felt like a forced concept / someting marketingy/brand-y/virtual to distract people from actual physical checkins. As such the use of the term "checkin" as referring to something virtual dilutes the meaning of the term.

Just a bookmark

Whether "checking into" a book, a page in a book, a movie, they are actually all just "bookmarks", especially in the example of "reading progress" mentioned above - which is a literal use of physical bookmarks.

There is no need for a different post type to express this concept.

IndieWeb Examples

gRegor Morrill

• gRegor Morrill is experimenting with posting reading progress check-ins as of 2015-01-25.
  • Currently using p-page and p-total to indicate progress. The percentage complete can be calculated and graphed from these values.
  • Using h-item and u-identifier for the book title. The identifier's href is in the format ISBN:XXXXX.
  • Manually POSSE to Goodreads.
  • Feedback is welcome, since this may not be the "best" way.

Tom Morris

• tommorris.org: book checkin prototype

Silo Examples

Goodreads

• Goodreads allows you to check-in your reading progress.

Dead services

• GetGlue (later renamed tvtag) allowed you to check in to TV, films, music and other media. Example stream

Open data sources

• OpenLibrary
• MusicBrainz
• Wikipedia via dbpedia with SPARQL

See also

• bookmark
• checkin
• read
• watch
• listen