Show HN: NeedleHunt, a free social graph search engine for people | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: NeedleHunt, a free social graph search engine for people

needlehunt.com

33 pointsjayzalowitz35 comments

For anyone wondering, the permissions it requests are:

"Generator Lab will receive the following info: your public profile, friend list, email address, custom friends lists, News Feed, birthday, work history, status updates, education history, current city, photos, website and personal description and your friends' work histories, status updates, education histories, current cities, photos, websites, personal descriptions and likes."

Come on now.

Yeah, we wanted to make sure we could properly let you search your connections, there is a toggle on the top right to do so.

That being said, if you want, change the scope of the request and the site should (i think) still work for you... if you feel the need to do so, drop it down to public profile and email which i think is the bare minimum.

That is a staggering amount of permissions you're asking for without any explanation of what you're offering.

Good point. We will try to lower it + have more information present soon.

In the meantime for everyone looking at it: NeedleHunt is the first free social graph search engine for talent. Anyone can use it to search for anyone. Our proprietary database has over 25 million people, including their full social identity. In other words, our system catalogs hundreds of millions of social profiles and consolidates them into our very simple profile format, making them searchable at the same time.

What is proprietary about your graph search engine? I guess you mean you're licensing someone else's tech?

edit: Wow, huge claims. Hundreds of millions of social media accounts, FULL INFO on 25 million people? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence that doesn't demand I give you such ridiculous, completely irrational permissions on my facebook account.

Everything about this screams "product manager" who is licensing someone else's tech, and is making exaggerated claims to make a quick buck through some angle. Totally slimy feel to this, and the fact you're basically "lol whoops my bad!!" when people bring up the stupid permission request tells me all I need to know.

double edit: btw, you'll "try" to lower it? This was three hours ago you said this.

No, we built this ourselves and are pretty proud of that.

I don't need your data from facebook man, let me know if you want me to delete your profile and I am more than happy to do so.

P.S. its been a busy day and I want to deploy things the right way, feel free to change scope in the auth.

Why not put this sort of information on the site more prominently? I didn't even see the footer links until I went back to the page to double check.

I don't use Facebook so couldn't make use of your site beyond that.

We are brainstorming some solutions for this as I type. Understood.

"Our proprietary database has over 25 million people, including their full social identity"

Instantly I assume you have built your database by harvesting your users' information. You should request the least amount possible, then request more permission later as required or as a exchange ("To view results/this profile, please authorise more permissions" or the like)

This. Why do you need the NF permission, status updates permission, photos permission, or all of those for friends?

FB platform policy says "Request only the data and publishing permissions your app needs."

Status is for analyze profile and photos permission gives some information about friendship level as well as location.

Saw the Facebook login as the only interactive option and immediately closed it. Seriously ?

Yeah, we are working on adding other options, but so many early users wanted to search their friends that we made the decision to do that first.

If you want to make a fake facebook profile to auth with I wont hold it against you.

You have to be crazy to think people will jump on this even after you ask this level of permissions. Landing page doesn't even really make clear what the use case is here. The feedback links pops up email client. Seriously?

People have been signing up for a while, but we understand the point about the permissions, and are going to work on it.

The landing page description is also something we are talking about right now.

>Facebook login

Sorry, not going to try it. Maybe you should implement this revolutionary new concept called a 'username and password'.

Ordinarily I wouldn't make such a specific web-dev comment here, but it drives me crazy when sites have an almost 1MB background image. If I can watch your image load, that is not a good usability experience.

I had to beat on my own company for weeks to get them to stop doing that junk, so I feel justified in throwing stones.

How might I use your free social graph search engine without a facebook account?

make a fake one, I wont hold it against you.

I assume that by signing up with possibly the most invasive, OTT privileges I've yet seen for fb then I am added to you database and thus become searchable?

Odds are you are already in there. If you want I can look you up and email a file back to you with what we have?

Our permissions are to improve your search experience. And we got the feedback from today that we need to pair it down, we will be doing that. In the meantime if you want to change the scope in the permissions I wont hold it against you (email and public profile are pretty much needed to make it work)

The best thing to come out of this is that it's an excellent eye opener as to how out there all our information is. The fact that you can say that he's probably in your system already is horrifying and shitty

That is true that developers betray a lot of information about themselves for being as security conscious as they are, perhaps we can team up for a secure your data day?

"It's true that farmers don't secure their chicken coops as well as they should, maybe we can team up for a secure your chickens day?" asked the fox, without the slightest hint of irony.

This literally makes me angry.

Let me know how I can help?

Images on your about page are 404ing.

http://referralfeed.com/about.php

I was going to email you directly, but you don't have an email on your profile page. Your profile page is also the strangest I've ever seen. ;)

Fixed, thanks for pointing it out, anyone else who wants to reach out myhandle@gmail

How does this work?

We have over 25 million entity resolved profiles representing 100s of millions of social profiles. We aggregate all the people into documents that just represent them, and make a search engine to work on that document set. The end goal is helping you find people.

Nice. Congrats guys.

Thanks!

Nice functionality!

Thanks

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