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Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

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Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#91
post #89

It's been a crazy 36 hours since I last posted here about my weekend project. This morning, I woke up to an email from Facebook Platform, saying that the application has gotten disabled. Full text of the email is at http://lts.cr/PRh I'm not using stream.publish, and I'm checking for updates as little as possible. Also, it seems it was deleted from my apps...so they didn't just disable it. It's gone for good. I may o…

The email also says "take user feedback [...] into account". So perhaps the automated system isn't that automated after all. And frankly, I am not surprised if Facebook isn't comfortable having this app around. If someone finds an exploit, and a "who has a secret crush on who" database gets out, that's a pretty major PR-disaster for Facebook. Non tech-savy Average Joe won't care that it wasn't Facebook's fault.

All you have, as a FB app, are a bunch of UIDs though. Not impregnable security, but stealing that data still puts you a long way from being able to say "Joe as a secret crush on Jane".

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#92

It's been a crazy 36 hours since I last posted here about my weekend project. This morning, I woke up to an email from Facebook Platform, saying that the application has gotten disabled. Full text of the email is at http://lts.cr/PRh I'm not using stream.publish, and I'm checking for updates as little as possible. Also, it seems it was deleted from my apps...so they didn't just disable it. It's gone for good. I may o…

Could it work as a browser plugin? And more generally, isn't it nearly impossible for FB or any other website to prevent plugins from accessing data as if they were the user?

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, some people view their phone in an intimate, personal way - not much different from their car - so the idea that Apple feel it is their phone and not your phone is rather insulting. Such expectations don't exist when interacting with services.

I've taken two jailbroken iphones into Apple for warrantee work, with Cydia and MyWi sitting there plain as day. I've never had them tell me I couldn't do that to their phone. I think people are letting their feelings about the App Store color everything about Apple. Ironically, the people with the strongest feelings are the people who least have to put up with it, since they understand how to get around it, whether…

Ironically, the people with the strongest feelings are the people who least have to put up with it...

Perhaps knowing how things could be makes one more upset at how they are, in any situation (not just phones).

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a more reasonable interpretation is the app was pulled for being spammy and the developer of the app was pulled for being a spammer. I think the implication that there is something sinister in this is reaching.

Breakup Notifier only sent out email notifications for relationship changes for those who explicitly asked for them. You could easily disable it by either personally blocking the app on Facebook, or unselecting those friends.

I wasn't making a judgement about whether I thought it was spammy, but what I considered a more likely interpretation of the available data to be. I'm also lumping everything of the nature "does abide by Facebook's terms" in the "spammy" bucket.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#95
post #61

In the brick and mortar world, it's extremely difficult to secure financing, investment, or even revenue if you're more than 50% dependent on an outside entity for your survival. Yet in the digital world, 100% dependency on another entity is becoming more and more common. Sounds like a high wire act without a net. Best to find other distribution outlets before you lose your balance.

To me, that is the surest indicator of a bubble-like market. I think some of the recent valuations for companies with many users but no profit nor any obvious business model are dubious at best. However, I think the valuations for companies that depend exclusively on one framework/inftrastructure base provided by another mega-valued company are downright crazy. Companies like Facebook have come and gone before, and w…

That's probably a bit overstated. Many, many companies are completely dependent on the Microsoft framework or the Oracle/Sun framework, yet there is not an issue with that.

The bigger issue is they are dependent on frameworks that are still evolving at very high rates. Rapid changes brings a lot of chaos into the equation, which is dangerous from an investment perspective, but that same chaos can lead to unexpectedly strong results as well.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, some people view their phone in an intimate, personal way - not much different from their car - so the idea that Apple feel it is their phone and not your phone is rather insulting. Such expectations don't exist when interacting with services.

I've taken two jailbroken iphones into Apple for warrantee work, with Cydia and MyWi sitting there plain as day. I've never had them tell me I couldn't do that to their phone. I think people are letting their feelings about the App Store color everything about Apple. Ironically, the people with the strongest feelings are the people who least have to put up with it, since they understand how to get around it, whether…

I was at the Genius Bar when a guy next to me got denied warranty work for having Cydia installed. It's quite irregular, to say the least.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#97
post #78
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jailbreaking is entirely legal. And jailbroken phones allow for the installation of arbitrary software. So really, iOS Terms are not as big of a deal as you make them out to be then? I think that the legality of the task is important, but it's also pretty critical how supported that task is. While it's legal to jailbreak, it's also (probably? unknown) legal for Apple to accidentally brick your phone during updates.

Not every device/OS combination can be easily jailbroken. Apple actively fights to keep us out of our own devices, and that has rubbed me the wrong way since I got an iPhone in the summer of 2009. I'll buy an Android or webOS phone next without question. That we can jailbreak is no consolation for, say, Grooveshark. They put in a lot of work into their iOS app and it's still only available to a relative handful of us…

Why should Apple make it easy to jailbreak? That's spending development resources directly against their own interest.

That said, you have complete access to your own device, but you don't own the OS running on it. If you want to figure out a way to run Android or something else on it, you're absolutely within your rights to do so, but Apple isn't under any obligation, legal or otherwise, to make it easy for you.

As for Grooveshark, it's a shame for them that they're not on the App Store, but it looks like they were for a bit and then got DMCA'd for some reason. There's nothing particular about the app itself that is objectionable for the store, considering Pandora is up there just fine and it seems like they're the same kind of thing. Jailbreak+Cydia is an alternative, but again, it's not Apple's job to make it a viable one.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, that is the surest indicator of a bubble-like market. I think some of the recent valuations for companies with many users but no profit nor any obvious business model are dubious at best. However, I think the valuations for companies that depend exclusively on one framework/inftrastructure base provided by another mega-valued company are downright crazy. Companies like Facebook have come and gone before, and w…

That's probably a bit overstated. Many, many companies are completely dependent on the Microsoft framework or the Oracle/Sun framework, yet there is not an issue with that. The bigger issue is they are dependent on frameworks that are still evolving at very high rates. Rapid changes brings a lot of chaos into the equation, which is dangerous from an investment perspective, but that same chaos can lead to unexpectedly…

But the difference is they're not dependent on the Microsoft presence. If Microsoft ceased to exist tomorrow (localised meteor strike, let's say), the code running on .NET, Windows, etc. will still work. If Facebook is down, so are you.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#99
post #61

In the brick and mortar world, it's extremely difficult to secure financing, investment, or even revenue if you're more than 50% dependent on an outside entity for your survival. Yet in the digital world, 100% dependency on another entity is becoming more and more common. Sounds like a high wire act without a net. Best to find other distribution outlets before you lose your balance.

On credit applications our business bank specifically asks if more than 25% of your revenue came from one source in the past calendar year. If you think about it, a typical brick and mortar gets its money from hundreds if not thousands of customers every year (restaurant/cafe, auto mechanic, etc).

Right, but these companies have lots of customers. They just get them from one place.

It's like renting a particular location: it's technically true that you could lose your lease, but that's only a risk to your business's long-term viability if your lease is artificially cheap (otherwise, you'll just move to another place on similar terms). And if your location is a particularly good deal, you should take it, even though losing it would suck.

Online, the same dynamic applies, but with lower transaction costs.

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