

Show HN: NeedleHunt, a free social graph search engine for people - jayzalowitz
http://www.needlehunt.com/

======
mattdeboard
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.

~~~
jayzalowitz
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.

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

~~~
jayzalowitz
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.

~~~
mattdeboard
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.

~~~
jayzalowitz
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.

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

~~~
jayzalowitz
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.

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sytelus
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?

~~~
jayzalowitz
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.

------
blueskin_
>Facebook login

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

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mdaniel
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.

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

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

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mintone
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?

~~~
jayzalowitz
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)

~~~
mattdeboard
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

~~~
jayzalowitz
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?

~~~
mattdeboard
"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.

------
starterblock
This literally makes me angry.

~~~
jayzalowitz
Let me know how I can help?

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nostromo
Images on your about page are 404ing.

[http://referralfeed.com/about.php](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. ;)

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

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fiatjaf
How does this work?

~~~
jayzalowitz
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.

------
satjot
Nice. Congrats guys.

~~~
jayzalowitz
Thanks!

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edwardotis
Nice functionality!

~~~
jayzalowitz
Thanks

