Today we’re pleased to announced our transition from private to public beta. All pages on Letterboxd are now publicly visible (except for those deemed private by their owners), and all new users are able to send invitations to friends immediately following sign up. Letterboxd will remain invitation-only for a period, to enable us to control our rate of growth.

In the six months since launching at Brooklyn Beta, we’ve attracted more than 17,000 beta testers, who have collectively written some 80,000 reviews, compiled close to 10,000 lists and added over 2 million films to their online diaries.

The amount and quality of feedback received during the private beta period has been overwhelming. Our users have proven to be engaged, lucid and passionate about film, which we love. Most of all, they love spending time on the site—the top third of users spends over ten minutes every time they visit, and this is reflected in the number of pages we’ve served to account holders: over a million per month in March and April.

The private beta period also gave us an opportunity to refine our service, and to add new features: a new diary view, the People page, popularity sorting options, an incoming activity stream, importing of ratings and lists from IMDb and Delicious Library, Netflix integration (import viewing history, add to instant queue and filter watchlist by Netflix availablility), and Twitter and Facebook friend finders. Today we’ve added another useful toggle that allows you to temporarily hide films you’ve seen (while browsing poster grid views), and introduced a small amount of display advertising (let us know if you have something to share with our users).

The public beta period will be used to further grow the Letterboxd community, to improve our mobile experience and to deliver a public API for third-party interaction. Now that we’re live to the public, we’d love you to share your profiles, reviews and lists (or any other page) across your existing networks.

Happy watching.