Twitter Cuts Off JustSpotted's (formerly Scoopler) Firehose Access | Hacker News Reader

Twitter Cuts Off JustSpotted's (formerly Scoopler) Firehose Access

techcrunch.com

37 pointsssclafani9 comments

So it's Gawker Stalker, worldwide?

I mean...

Well.

These are real people, with dreams and ambitions and parents somewhere. They want to make the most of their startup and their tech with this pivot. I wish them well because what they're doing is hard and I admire it.

They are bigger people than I. I don't know how I could be excited to get up in the morning and advance the state of the art of something as insipid as realtime celebrity tracking. Anything around celebrity is almost always bereft of decency or lasting value. Celebrity masturbation's inconsequential place in the grand effort to move humanity forward, relative to the amount of time, energy and money it receives, fills me with sadness and exhaustion. I try not to think about it. I try to forget it exists. This story has pierced that shroud a bit.

May I be declared an idiot when People Magazine buys them in two years and they're set for their next venture. I just... could not do it.

We actually weren't using the firehose from Twitter for JustSpotted. That relationship was for Scoopler, our real-time search engine which we shut down on Tuesday. We're using the public APIs for this new site. Basically, everything still rocking.

>>>everything still rocking<<<

Sigh.

I wonder what happened to changing the world?

Is it wrong to wonder why they're throwing something as meaningful as live data integration at this massive scale on tracking human beings as if they were animals? Sure, the startup was about to sink and they wanted to make the most of their money, but surely there could have been better uses for that technology than violating someone's privacy?

Can you imagine what it must feel like to be some xyz celebrity right now? Just how unsafe something like this is for them? What right does anyone have to tread on someones life like that?

My head is going to explode from the number of times "pivot" is mentioned in that article.

Golden rule for startup: do not build your entire model on the back of a giant like Twitter. Outcome: They will buy you off (rarely), they will cut your oxygen line off or they replicate your service; in most cases your screwed.

I think this is a risk, but Facebook and Twitter both have very large ecosystems of startups having success on those platforms. (See: Zynga and Twitpic)

The lesson here is more of proper strategic planning. Just because you have access to a firehose doesn't mean you should just start waving it around.

Next up: Google Maps withdrawn.

lol

From Google Maps TOS (http://www.google.com/intl/en_ALL/help/terms_maps.html)

[...]

you will not: (a) defame, abuse, harass, stalk, threaten or otherwise violate the legal rights (such as rights of privacy and publicity) of others;

[...]

I believe this is why Gawker Stalker is no longer around.

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