What's New

Welcome back to The Marathon Show! I'm your host Josh and today we've got a small but mighty update for you. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!

Like comments

There are now even more ways to show your appreciation for others! Tap the new heart icon on someone's comment to leave them a like and spread the love 💚

Improved notifications

It was about high time that we improved our admittedly clunky notifications screen! We took out our broom and dustpan and cleaned up the space, leaving you with a much simpler view.

We also heard your feedback about marking notifications as read automatically and have sprinkled some magic to make that dream a reality.

Better comments

In the before times (a.k.a. version 2.6 and below), you wouldn't be notified if somebody replied to your comment unless you created the review or list it belonged to.

With this latest update, we're testing out having all users in the comment thread receive notifications when a new reply is added. Let us know what you think by sending us feedback from our in-app settings!

Coming soon...

Why such a small update this week? Well, we're working on something big and this is all in service to that! More to come on that soon 👀

Want to help us shape the future of Marathon? Take our survey!

Marathon prides itself on providing transparency into our process and listening to user feedback (we have a form built right into our app!). This week, we decided to take a pause on the bigger features we're working on to focus solely on implementing user feedback. Consider it our first of many Feedback Weeks!

Stop Watching

Back in March, we introduced a new way to filter your Watching screen by marking series as paused. Since then, we received feedback that "paused" doesn't always feel like the right category. You may have given up on the series and don't plan on picking it up again. But you also don't want to lose your progress by removing the series.

To solve this, we added a third option: stop watching. By stopping a series, the series will be moved to a new Stopped filter that you can access anytime from the Watching screen. Plus, all your progress will be saved so you keep credit for trying!

Not Started

In addition to the new Stopped filter, we've added a new Not started filter to the Watching screen! Tapping this will only show the series that you've added but haven't gotten the chance to watch yet.

Remove Avatar

Ever uploaded an avatar to your profile, but then decided you liked our default one better? We've got you covered! To remove your avatar, simply press the X on the image when you next edit your profile.

Signing Up Again

We like to be transparent about our failures and we had quite a big one that went unnoticed for a while! Thanks to some recent feedback, we learned that users who had previously deleted their accounts were greeted with an error when trying to sign up again with the same email address.

We've gone ahead and updated our systems to allow deleted users to re-sign up. If you know anyone who ran into this issue, you can let them know they're in the clear to try Marathon again! And we'll make sure this doesn't happen again 🫡

...And More!

• Clear search. We've introduced a new quick clear button to your search bar.

• Season ordering. Some seasons were being displayed out-of-order; we've gone ahead and sorted them correctly!

• Sign in. We've given our sign-in screen a fresh coat of paint ✨

Marathon TV, Inc. is a brand new startup founded by Josh Pensky. Our mission is to foster a community of television enthusiasts and help folks tell their story through this new Golden Age of Television.

Why Now?

Since our launch of Marathon 2.0 back in January, the Marathon community has grown to over 4,000 members and sees around 200 active users every day. In February, we were featured in the App Store’s Best New Apps and Updates list and even had an article written about us in Lifehacker! Marathon has gotten a lot of traction since our initial release in August 2022, and it’s time we took the next step.

What's Changing?

Marathon will remain the same social TV network app that you’ve come to love. The same team that has worked on Marathon up to this point will continue working on it in the future.

In the short term, the biggest change will be some small updates to our website, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service to account for the ownership change from founder Josh Pensky to Marathon TV, Inc.

Over the longer term, we hope that this step leads to our first investments from venture capital firms and angel investors who believe in Marathon TV, Inc.’s mission. We plan to use these investments to build up a larger team working on the app, which means greater stability, more features, and more support for our growing community of television lovers.

What Can I Do?

• Keep telling your friends about Marathon! We love seeing new users joining the app and creating social circles with their friends and family.
• Are you a founder? We’d be excited to get in contact with you and learn more about your journey through these first few stages.
• Know of (or are yourself) a TV-loving investor? We’d love to talk more about the future of our platform and how you can support us.

We couldn’t be more excited about this announcement and all that comes with it. Marathon started as a passion project 6 years ago and has truly blossomed into something bigger than I could have ever imagined. Thank you to all our users and folks that have supported this project over the past few years 💚

Marathon has always been about two things: watching the latest TV and sharing that with friends. But therein lies the question: how can you watch the latest TV if you don't know when things are premiering?

One of the most highly requested features has just made it to the app: Upcoming. We've split the Up Next screen into two tabs:

• Watching. Track your current progress through the series you're watching (or paused).

• Upcoming. Track all upcoming episodes of the series you're watching (or paused), including premieres and those batch drops we love to binge.

With this new addition, the ever-expanding world of TV is at your fingertips.

Improvements & Fixes

• Filter search. Gone are the days of scrolling for the service you have. A handy new search bar at the top of the filter pop-up lets you quickly search!

• We've made a few visual improvements across the app and squashed a few bugs.

For the OG users of Marathon 1.0, you may remember a time when search didn't happen in a pop-up screen. When we made the switch in 2.0, we thought it would help separate the search experience from the rest of the app.

However, we heard some user feedback that it may feel too separate, making the tabs at the bottom of the screen inaccessible. In this latest update, we've decided to re-merge search with the rest of the app. As always, feel free to leave us feedback in-app to let us know what you think!

Improvements & Fixes

• List previews. List previews have gotten a makeover, with a new generated image unique and personalized to each list.

• Faster images. Images are now much faster to load and reload, thanks to Expo Image.

• Dismissable sheets. We've heard your feedback and now all sheets in the app (including filters, pausing series, sharing, etc.) are dismissable with a swipe down!

• We've made a few visual improvements to the profile screen to highlight the follower and following links.

• For some time now, it appeared that series on your Watched screen were at 0% progress (even if you finished them!) — that has now been fixed.

Less than a year ago, we introduced Marathon to the world with the image of a rainbow gradient lighting up a TV screen. Our logo served us well. We created 12 (!) app icons that played with our logo in some way or another. We designed countless social media posts, announcing new features and our 2023 roadmap. But most importantly, it represented who we were: a bright, queer-founded start-up with a love for television that we wanted to share with the world.

As Marathon continues to grow (as of writing, we're 3,000 strong!), we found that we reached the limit of our current branding. So, over the past few weeks, we tasked ourselves to find a new brand, one that could scale as we do. And, Marathon family, we've found it.

The new Marathon logo is simple: it's a TV! But this TV opens up the door for new possibilities we couldn't imagine before — and we've already got a few ideas ready to go.

So, what else has changed? Marathon's emerald green has shined bright throughout our app since day 1 and it was about time we put it front and center, replacing our old rainbow gradient 💚. We've also simplified our typography, now relying only on Pangram Pangram's Mori family, and cleaned up the icon system to match our new angular logo. And, of course, we couldn't forget our lovely app icons, which we refreshed across the board. Check out our brand kit for the full scoop.

A website is the perfect expression of a brand, and so we've updated ours to show off what our new logo can do. Check it out!

We're so excited by Marathon's future and hope you are too! You'll start to see our branding updates roll out in our Android and iOS apps over the next few weeks.

What better way to mark 2,200+ users than with a 2.2.0 update!

Share to Instagram Stories

Our biggest new feature is a complete overhaul to the share sheet!

Images are now generated for every profile, series, season, episode, and review.

You can share these directly on Instagram Stories, or download them to share on other social media.

Reviews, seasons, and episodes now have direct links so you can share them with external users.

Series updates

We've made some updates to the series screen. You can now browse seasons and episodes separately using our newly designed tabs. We've also added taglines, series status, and genres to the top of the screen.

Appearance settings

You can now customize the app to your liking.

Change the screen your app launches to from Activity to your Up Next feed.

Change progress display from percentage watched to number of episodes left.

Change the default seasons/episodes tab that the series screen opens to.

Improvements & Fixes

• Trending filters. You can now filter the trending page to see series on services you subscribe to or genres you like!

• Holo icon. What update is complete without a new icon 😉 introducing, Holo!

• New episodes in the Up Next screen are now labeled with a green New tag!

• You can now include web links in your reviews!

• We've made some tweaks to Up Next to make it clear what it means to pause watching a series. To see all series you've paused, hit the Paused filter on the Up Next screen.

• We've given the Settings screen a fresh coat of paint!

• Episode screens now contain the runtime and release date!

• The edit profile form is now a bit clearer on what it means to go "private."

• We've made some small changes to how tabs look across the app!

The time has finally arrived: Marathon is now available on Android! 🍎 💗 🤖

Android support

Marathon is now available on Android. Say hello to our new friends!

Onboarding

New users will now be greeted with an onboarding flow! Here, you'll be able to add your name, avatar, bio, and pronouns before jumping right into the action.

Improvements & Fixes

• Some series and episodes were missing image previews. We now have an empty icon to denote when!

• We've switched to using action sheets when appropriate for bigger hit targets.

• Emojis used to affect the line height of long text. We've fixed this so they fit right in!

• Line charts should now show the correct number of stars for the average rating.

• Sometimes you might've seen "Invalid Date" or "NaN%"—well, no more! Those bugs have been squashed.

• We misspelled Changelog 😅 that has been corrected!

Say hello to our second major release of Marathon! We've rebuilt everything from the ground-up, from front to back, resulting in a faster and speedier app.

Rebuilt from the ground-up.

Marathon 2 has been rebuilt from the ground-up to be faster, speedier, and more stable. We also now support iOS 13 and above.

Refreshed design

We've taken to redesigning our series and episode pages, and adding a few finishing touches across the app.

Charts and graphs

Series and profile charts have gotten a makeover, and we've added a new line graph showing season and episode ratings over the course of a series.

Likes and comments

You can now leave likes and comments on both lists and reviews! (Don't worry, you can disable comments.)

Ratings and reviews

You can now rate and review seasons and episodes, and we've built a few new charts to go along with them. You can also now leave half-star ratings!

Notification center

We've added a new screen to manage all your notifications and mark them as read.

Improvements & Fixes

• You can now add seasons and episodes to lists!

• You can hide series from your Up Next view.

• You can now report bugs and send feedback in-app.

• You can now search across series, users, and lists at the same time.

• We forgot the little icon on the Sign in with Apple button, whoops!

• Your feeds should now load a bit faster!

• We confused hours and days on your profile — the time watched stat should now be correct!

• We were taking up a lot of memory loading in images. We've made a few tweaks to prevent crashes.

• We decided to hide the line chart under certain cases that made it unnecessary.

• Likes and comments on lists now appear directly in your feed!

• Season reviews were always displaying as S01. They should now accurately show the correct season number

• Notifications were floating in the middle of your screen. Well, no more! They should now stay at the bottom.

• We fixed an issue where you had to tap twice to enter into a search result or close the search page.

Removed

We've temporarily removed the following features while we do some more thinking on how they fit into the scope of Marathon v2!

• Widgets are no longer available.

• You can no longer sort or filter a list.

You can now filter and sort on custom lists and user's watchlist and watched series! Visit a user's profile to fade watched series, compare progress, and show what's in common with your added series

Improvements & Fixes

• The CRT app icon has been visually updated to be a bit brighter!
• Miscellaneous spacing and accessibility improvements.