Live data from Hacker News

Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

techcrunch.com

151–160 of 169 posts

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And given what excessive leverage did to the world's financial markets not so very long ago, I think relying on that kind of leverage again in this market is crazy.

So if my business relied on airfreight I am leveraged by the airlines, the airport owners, the aircraft makers, the pilots unions, the oil companies .... So logically anyone who wants to ship a physical product should start by developing their own oil well and aluminium ore mine.

The better analogy would be: if you business depends on Delta Airlines you should have a good chat with other Airlines to expand your business. It' s a common pattern in the non-virtual world that dependency on one exclusive channel/customer (Ask textile producers in Pakistan about IKEA) is prone to fail.

And indeed, if your business depends on airfreight you will also be strongly coupled to the destiny of that part of the industry. There's no need to develop your own oil well, but to have a vision about alternatives is a good thing in that case. Branson's Virgin sells records. And airtravel. And Mobiles. Would he have survived by betting exclusively on Sony MiniDisc ?

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#152

I work on the Platform team at Facebook and wanted to respond to some of the comments on this post. Breakup Notifier is an interesting idea and an example of the sort of engagement that developers can get on Facebook Platform (according to our stats this app had ~13k monthly Facebook users). That said, we've built a number of automated systems that track people’s response to News Feed stories generated by apps to ens…

Why was the developer's personal account disabled? How is the developer supposed to contact Facebook via a disabled user account?

The account was not disabled.

I am not going to go into specific details of what our system does, but we require that the developer verify their identity when we take a policy action on an app.

We do this to ensure that the account wasn't compromised (which could have led to the behavior our system detected).

If you have ever forgotten your Facebook password, it is a similar flow.

We communicate with the developer over their alternative email in these cases.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And given what excessive leverage did to the world's financial markets not so very long ago, I think relying on that kind of leverage again in this market is crazy.

So if my business relied on airfreight I am leveraged by the airlines, the airport owners, the aircraft makers, the pilots unions, the oil companies .... So logically anyone who wants to ship a physical product should start by developing their own oil well and aluminium ore mine.

Well, for what it's worth, airlines do engage in quite a bit of commodity price collaring in order to ensure that fuel price fluctuations don't totally destroy their business model. This is in some respects de-leveraging at least as far as this conversation is concerned :)

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't agree with this at all.

Yes it's true that your products wont stop functioning in the short term, but a dead framework that's no longer supported and updated means you HAVE TO rewrite it using another framework. and we all know how costly rewrites are.

I find the 2 scenarios you listed to have much more in common than not. The main difference is the amount of time you have to react.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#155
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really bad argument. You're implying that the leverage discussed here (coupling your product with Facebook) is the same as the leverage that caused the financial crisis. The only thing they have in common is you can use the word "leverage" to describe either of them.

Yes and no. If the companies in question are privately held then to a certain extent the risk is only with investors brave (or foolish) enough to back them. However, what do you think would happen to the tech industry, and potentially the wider world economy, if a big name company suddenly went up in smoke, public or otherwise? Now, please pause for a moment and consider: it doesn't have to be Microsoft or Apple or O…

Twitter makes money.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#156
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That isn't really true. If Microsoft somehow ceased to exist, business would switch away from Windows and products written exclusively for that platform would be toast. The difference is really that for internet/cloud platforms, temporary outages can lead to lost revenue--which everyone developing apps on those platforms hopefully recognizes, especially given Twitter's former reputation for instability.

But the switch would not be immediate, a least giving providers some time to move to other frameworks. As you say, from a slightly different angle, it is the immediate effect that is the problem with relying on facebook or a similar network for your business: if they fall over tomorrow or simply change their rules so your product does not comply, your revenue stream stops that instant and until you can design and implement changes in the product or business model.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people on my list have completely preposterous names that are clearly not real. I've changed mine many times to many stupid things and never had a problem.

Let's hope you get busted for missing the whole point of facebook and are quickly removed. Honestly, how gutless can you be? Quite the charades you got going there, congrats! If that's what interests you...

missing the whole point of facebook

That depends on if you consider the point of facebook to give detailed, accurate biographical data about yourself away to a company with which you have no monetary relationship, so that this company can then sell it, or not.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why was the developer's personal account disabled? How is the developer supposed to contact Facebook via a disabled user account?

The account was not disabled. I am not going to go into specific details of what our system does, but we require that the developer verify their identity when we take a policy action on an app. We do this to ensure that the account wasn't compromised (which could have led to the behavior our system detected). If you have ever forgotten your Facebook password, it is a similar flow. We communicate with the developer ov…

Thank you for the response. You are a mensch.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#160
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the info being provided by the user, or is the app detecting info that is no longer being provided by the user, i.e. lack of friend status is not the same as a notification that you are no longer friends. If the deal is with regard to the former, I can easily imagine that FB doesn't tell you these things intentionally. If they leave it as a silent disconnect, they can construct their TOU to prohibit detecting conn…

It's provided by the user, when they switch their relationship status from in a relationship to 'single' it appears on everyone's feed.

Does anything post if you remove your relationship status rather than change it to something else?
Post reply on HN