Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maciej is a fabulous writer with a deft mix of wry, self-deprecating wit and precise expressions. If you aren't familiar with his writing, you'd likely enjoy "Dabblers and Blowhards" http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
Or my favourite: http://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_t...
My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
171–180 of 223 posts
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
That didn't happen. Please cite.
Its a fairly well known accusation that has many pieces of circumstantial evidence as well as many lawsuits. Many business owners have claimed yelp salespeople have called them and tried to sell them the ability to bring down unfavorable reviews or that they would highlight them. One google search away: yelp wins lawsuit that says they are perfectly within their rights to manipulate their ratings: http://www.dailydot…
The ruling was that if yelp manipulated ratings, that's fine, but there's no evidence they did. I don't know whether to believe they've done it or not. There's a lot of business owners over the years who report having gotten shady calls, but it'd be really hard to prove those calls are from yelp and not from fly-by-night scammers. I get calls from "Cardholder Services" and "Microsoft" pretty regularly, so it shouldn't be surprising if there are extortive yelp scammers.
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#173I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…
"we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count." But this is the value you provide, this is your raison d'etre.
This is a legal, future setting precedent for ifttt and they're gambling on weaker websites to get squeezed.
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#174I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…
Isn't that the entire premise of your service, providing this glue? Yeah, it's painful work. That's why people like your service! Sure, it would be great for you if the other services would do some of the work. But I'm guessing that you would not go along with Twitter requesting all intellectual property rights to your integration code for the right to use their API. Why would you request it of the services that integrate with you?
But the biggest problem here is that you changed the game. You created and maintained the Pinboard integration. You should own up to not wanting to maintain it. The message you sent to Pinboard users about your decision was... "misleading" is the nicest way to put it.
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being CEO of IFTTT must not be a very demanding job if you offer to come over to every service that connects to your platform, in order to contribute to coding their API. Joking aside, Maciej isn't asking for "more time", he's asking for: 1. Money, if he has to do your work for you 2. Some kind of guaranty that your undocumented, private API won't change without notice in the future, rendering all this work useless 3…
Actually, all I want is for existing IFTTT recipes that use Pinboard not to break. I am fine with IFTTT discontinuing support for my site because of our diverging views on whether a service like IFTTT should be a platform or a roll of duct tape, but the stuff people have duct-taped together should stay duct-taped together.
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#176HN meta: I'm sort of disappointed that this has been getting downvoted. Obviously, what Linden is saying in this case is probably not helping his business case. It's clear to me that he either does not understand why Maciej doesn't want to implement a private API, or does not wish to understand it. On the other hand, neither of those things are grounds for a downvote, I think. A downvote says "this content shouldn't…
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
My hobby: role-playing how I would respond as the CEO if my company was getting skewered on HN. Here is my version! --- I am [not] the CEO over at IFTTT. We messed up. Big time. Pinboard -- and other services developers love -- played an important role in our success thus far and we dropped the ball with the roll-out of our new platform. We have a shared incentive: to make channels work reliably for our end-users. To…
I think your hobby could be a MVP for the first CAaaS -- CEO Apologies As A Service. (If you act fast, Theranos could be your first Enterprise customer.)
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#178I am the CEO over at IFTTT. I apologize for any misunderstanding our communications today have caused. I built the Pinboard Channel on IFTTT and have maintained it for years. I am also a paying customer of Pinboard! I’ve built for hundreds of platforms and any changes to those platforms by default suck. At IFTTT, we've been on the receiving end of platform changes too many times to count. I want to make sure we do it…
I'm a pinboard user, and an IFTTT user. I've also made a few recipes on IFTTT including the pinboard > Google Calendar one. The sum of your comments on here mean that I'll be looking to reimplement all of the IFTTT recipes I use on Botize. You've stood by your legal team and defended the ToC, in addition to how this has been communicated and handled, and what it is you're trying to do. Are you really trying to assert…
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
IANAL, but in general the penalty for breaking the terms of a contract, in the absence of an explicit damages clause, are whatever business loss the other party suffers as a result.
Indeed, but are the terms of service a contract? Is there any consideration? The answer is probably no, they are merely a set of expectations they have around providing their service.
Re: My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT
#180It would be easier to support IFTTT on this if the proposed APIs to be implemented were public. But making the APIs private and then being a dick about it with all the legal threats isn't something that I can reasonably support. I doubt I'm alone in thinking this way.
We fully intend to make the APIs public, but are working with existing partners to implement. We are trying to be flexible and understanding, also are not throwing legal threats :)
What I'm hearing is you want partners to trust your intents but you don't trust any of theirs—as evidenced by the terms of service that is required and binding. The "not throwing legal threats" part comes off very hollow in that context.
If you did trust your partners, you'd make a new API alongside the current setup, and it would be so awesome that people would switch on their own. But as others already pointed out, it seems the value in the new API is self-serving and is inexistent for your partners.
I'm all for collaboration but I suspect you are trying to build a moat around your business and make a ubiquitous platform. I sincerely hope this backfires.