Is Serializd the TV fan's Letterboxd?
A television-focused app is starting to take off. I spoke to its founder.
In 2022, just over ten years since it first launched, Letterboxd saw its billionth film reviewed. Not quite a social media app, not quite Goodreads for movies, it introduced a new way to interact with film and track your watchlists. It has catapulted in popularity over the last few years, with some celebrities even having public accounts and every user turning into their own micro-critic. I’m mostly speculating, though, because I obviously don’t watch enough film to bother getting Letterboxd, but I quickly got addicted to Serializd, a comparable app thoughtfully tailored to television watchers. Below, I spoke to its founder about the app’s day-to-day operations and its future in the landscape of TV tracking/reviewing apps.
I discovered Serializd like many likely will, by word of mouth (thank you to my editor’s brother!). There is something satisfying—and extremely useful for critics and fans of the medium—about looking back on a season of television and being able to know exactly which episodes you loved or hated. Serializd lets you “log” individual episodes by giving it a star rating out of five, and review entire seasons when you get to a finale. Ratings are averaged per episode, giving you a pretty good idea of how individual episodes are landing with viewers. In my experience so far, the ratings feel more accurate than what I’ve seen on IMDb, which is prone to review bombing by misogynists and racists (often before a show is even released).
Serializd scratches that Spotify Wrapped itch, it feels like reaching back into some childhood excitement over collecting stamps or stickers. I’m keeping my account private for now (I don’t want tvscholar followers to yell at me for giving a Succession episode 3.5 stars!), but you can probably find it if you’re clever. Apparently I’ve watched over ten months worth of television in my adult life, gosh.
I’ve gotten a kick out of opening my app every morning to see what my friend Robbie is watching since I convinced them to hop onto the app. Spending too long on Twitter makes you feel like everyone is watching the same four shows, but Robbie reminds me of the breadth of the medium and the value of dipping into older television. They’re currently watching old sitcoms like WKRP in Cincinnati (1978-82), and they recently started Judging Amy (1999-2005) after having it on the docket for years, while sprinkling in old episodes of Survivor as a treat. I need all my friends to be on Serializd so I can be this nosy.
“It’s pretty comparable to Letterboxd," Robbie told me over text when I checked in on them. “I definitely use this more regularly since I watch more episodes than I do movies. I look forward to when it eventually introduces new features or reconfigures the layout in ways I didn’t know I wanted.”
Serializd was conceptualized and founded by Humad, a software engineer, and is run with the help of their friend who handles the user interface design. Humad calls Serializd their “dream TV app” after realizing the TV tracking apps on the market (like TV Time) weren’t quite satisfying the community-building they envisioned for TV fans. After realizing that everyone I recommended the app to got hooked a few weeks in, I reached out to Humad to ask a few questions about how Serializd came to be and where the future of the app is headed. They graciously responded.
Can you tell me a bit about yourself and how you got around to starting Serializd?
Hi, I'm Humad. I'm a big TV fan and a software engineer. I love watching TV and discussing shows with other people, and I'm obsessive about tracking the media I'm consuming. A couple of years back I realized that there wasn't a good app that had built a community of TV fans and allowed them to track shows and engage with each other meaningfully. Obviously there are some popular TV tracking apps out there, but nothing that fit my exact needs. So I decided to just build my dream TV app instead of waiting around for it. I created Serializd to combine and give life to those things I love — to track and review TV shows and build a community with the people who want to do that, too!
Originally, Serializd was only available on the web, and I had told a handful of friends about it. For the longest time it was just our little space to share our thoughts about TV with each other. Over the years it has grown into something larger — it's available on all platforms (Web, iOS, Android) with a massive community of TV fans writing thousands of reviews every day. I see it bringing value to peoples' lives every day and that brings me an incredible amount of joy.
Fun fact: I share my birthday with Serializd :)
What do the day-to-day operations look like at Serializd, and is it a full-time job to keep up with it?
Something to note is that Serializd is not a company. It’s truly just a passion project. I started Serializd on my own and currently do all the development work on it. I’m joined by a friend who does all of the UI designs. We both have full-time jobs that are separate from Serializd. On weekdays, I’ll have a regular day of work, and then work on Serializd in the evenings. On weekends, I’ll work during the day and catch up on TV in the evening.
The work itself is kind of chaotic, but in a really fun way. Some days I’ll sit down with a plan in mind for a new feature and just hack it out in one sitting. Other days I’m fixing bugs or doing moderation or answering emails. Every now and then I pop into the Discord or Twitter to see if people have any questions. It’s all over the place, really.
Some days can be incredibly stressful, especially when I have a busy day at my “real” job, or things in my personal life demand my attention, or something on Serializd just breaks and I get flooded with “Bug report” emails. But at the end of the day, it’s extremely rewarding to work on Serializd and see people getting value out of it. I’m really proud of the community that people have built around it, and that’s what really keeps me going.
What’s your relationship like to television, do you watch a lot of TV or have any shows that have been formative to you?
I actually grew up watching movies more than TV. I’m a big film buff and was not into TV all that much until college, when my roommate sat me down and made me watch the first season of Lost. Funnily, I never made it past the first season (and I don’t have a desire to get back into it, sorry Lost fans!) but I started watching more TV around that time. It was easy to watch a few episodes of a show between classes, or have something light in the background while I did other things, and before I knew it I had binged a LOT of TV.
Of course I watched all the big hits around that time — Breaking Bad, The Office, Game of Thrones - but what really made me fall in love with television was a little show called BoJack Horseman. Obviously we now know BoJack is one of the best animated shows of all time, but back when I started watching it, I was caught completely off guard. How good could a Netflix original animated show about a depressed horse be? As Raphael Bob-Waksberg showed me, really fucking good. On a side note, if you haven’t checked out his collection of short stories, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory, you’re missing out on some beautiful writing.
When I fall in love with something, I like to engage with it on multiple levels. So just watching TV wasn’t enough, I wanted to be more involved. Every now and then I’ll pick up a book about television (the last one I read was I Like To Watch by Emily Nussbaum — a truly fantastic collection of essays about how TV and its perception has changed over the years, as well as giving some really interesting insight to some of my favourite shows), and listen to TV podcasts (I love The Watch with Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald), and engage in discussions about TV shows and culture (which was a big reason for creating Serializd).
Anyway, I’ll stop here. I could go on for hours about this stuff.
What are your long-term aspirations for Serializd?
The goal right now is to continue growing Serializd and foster a community of truly passionate TV fans. I want Serializd to be the place people hop on to after the latest episode of Succession to see what everyone thought, to engage in meaningful discussion, and to figure out what to watch next. Despite being an activity we usually participate in individually, I truly believe engaging with television is a collective experience and I want to create a place where people can come together, connect on their favourite shows, and transform solitary screen time into a shared journey.
That’s basically the vision I have. People often ask me if I’m going to monetize Serializd, either through ads or a subscription, but I’m not thinking about any of that for now. I want to make Serializd as accessible as possible for as long as I can.
Can you give me any insight into how widely used the app is? Once I started using it, I found myself having to log everything I watch — I imagine many others use it in this capacity as well.
I can’t give you specific numbers, but Serializd has grown considerably over the last two years. Like I said, it was originally just a place for me and my friends. I started to tell people about it on Reddit and Twitter and it slowly grew from there. Since then, it has kind of formed its own community. There’s a subreddit, as well as a Discord, neither of which I created. It’s been really heartwarming to see people use it daily and find value in it. I once met someone in person who told me they had “found this cool new app called Serializd” and I almost cried.
What makes me the happiest though is when people give me feedback and suggestions. That signals to me that they really care and want to see Serializd improve. Please feel free to send me suggestions at serializd@gmail.com.
What is a comedy and drama that you recommend to whoever is reading?
Oh this is a really hard question! I guess off the top of my head, Derry Girls is a fantastic comedy show. I really want more people to watch it! I've seen it 5+ times but find it really difficult to find people to talk to about it.
For a drama series, it’s hard to recommend anything other than Succession right now. I’m really upset that it’s ending soon. I think it’s going to be a while before we get something as good as that again.
