media checkin

Media check-in is a somewhat controversial concept invented by silos that refers to a virtual check-in post, where the "location" is an item of consumable media such as a book, audio, video, or realtime stream like a radio or TV broadcast, and the check-in indicates your current attention rather than location.

Why

A media check-in is one way to answer the question “What are you doing?”, a past silo writing prompt.

More recently, some media streaming services have implemented "Wikipedia:Social viewing" features (AKA Watch Party or Group Watch) which may provide a use-case for posting a “media check-in” on your own site, perhaps with whoever else happens to be watching the same show at the same time.

Why not

Like a typical check-in, a media check-in implies an active current presence.

Thus posts about having completed (even recently) consuming a piece of media are not really check-ins (perhaps they could be check-outs if you recently finished or left something).

Instead, if you want to capture having consumed an item of media, use the following posts:

listen — when finished listening to a song, podcast, or other audio item
read - when having finished a book, or chapter there of, sometimes used for having starting reading a book as well
watch - after viewing a film, movie, TV show etc.

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

Before adding yourself here, check to see if your example is actually a post about a real-time current state, or if it is about something you have finished.

For posts about having consumed an item of media, instead see and add your example to e.g.:

E.g.

gRegor Morrill: See my example on the read page.
benji: See read, watch, and listen examples.

Add yourself!

If you have an actual real-time media check-in post, not just a completion of consuming a piece of media, then Add yourself here… (see this for more details)!

Past Examples

Tom Morris

Image link is dead as of 2025-05-01: Tom Morris: book checkin prototype

Silo Examples

Goodreads

Goodreads allows you to check-in your reading progress.

Past Silo Example

GetGlue (later renamed tvtag) allowed you to check in to TV, films, music and other media. Archived example