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Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

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Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#161

Post by rhizome »

fwdbureau wrote: post #149
theli0nheart wrote: post #55

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…

Although your app was an awesome piece of tech, did it come to your mind that they may have disabled it only because it's slightly disrespectful towards people? I mean there are real people behind every FB face, and a breakup can be sad or painful. Maybe for an undetermined percentage of the population, the effect of breakup notifier may be like a knife in the chest?

More disrespectful than FB leaking out your entire profile and friend list to every single FB game developer and their third-party ad providers? I'm doubtful that "respect" of users plays a role here, or in FB decisions at all.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#162

Post by rhizome »

smackfu wrote: post #113
rhizome wrote: 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…

Facebook also lets you delete updates from your wall, so that it's not obvious something changed. This circumvents that.

I tend to think of these kinds of apps as "slow spiders," which when thought about in that way makes a bit more sense on the FB-ban side.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#163

Post by Gormo »

dougws wrote: post #144
kolektiv wrote: post #98

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.

I doubt many businesses that have built and scaled their infrastructure on Microsoft systems would overhaul their entire operations just because Microsoft itself disappeared. Consider the amount of legacy systems still in use in large enterprises today; many of these were originally designed by companies that are long gone.

If anything, the collapse of Microsoft would produce many smaller companies competing to satisfy the ubiquitous demand for Windows support.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#164

Post by Gormo »

sjs wrote: post #78
cryptoz wrote: 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…

The terminology isn't helping, either. "Jailbreak" makes it analogous to illicitly helping convicts escape prison, not reclaiming your right to your own property.

What would be a more positive term? "Repo" would provide a better analogy, but still has some negative connotations; "liberate" sounds far too grandiose.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#165

Post by gonehome »

blake8086 wrote: post #29
gonehome wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinion is that this app does not violate the behavior that FB wants to dissuade. It sends an email that provides information that is already being provided by the user, it does not track or determine information that is otherwise not available.

Facebook does not want to provide that information. Twitter is similar in that they ask you to not publish deleted tweets.

It's not the absence of a status, it's a new one being posted. When somebody switches from 'in a relationship' to 'single' it shows up on everyone's feed. They do want people to know that information.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#166

Post by ajiabs »

douglasp wrote: post #145

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…

This is scary thought. I am a facebook developer. We invest lot of time, sweat and money creating apps. If there is something not right, you contacting the the developer to give them some time fix the issues sounds reasonable. but pulling the plug is sure a scary thought. Everybody wants the users to have good experience. It is face books users. Not ours. While agreeing to that you need some balance. It's the apps made facebook what it is today.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#167

Post by gonehome »

rhizome wrote: post #160
gonehome wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It does not, but from what I understand the 'break up notifier' only alerts you when somebody switches the status to single. Not when they hide it.

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#168

Post by blazespin2 »

douglasp wrote: post #145

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…

douglasp, you're saying 13K users and the developer is claiming 100,000 or 3M, can you please clarify which is the right number?

Re: Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook

#169

Post by butterfi »

jdminhbg wrote: post #63
jellicle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that is the crux of the difference: some people disagree with you that the hardware which they purchased is "Apple's hardware".

Hard to tell what the parent meant, but I took "Apple's hardware" to mean the infrastructure that runs the App Store and iTunes platform (like using Facebook's hardware to run there).

That was a poor choice of words on my part, I was indeed referring to App store/iTunes. I do believe that hardware should be open.
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