
With $30M More in Hand, IFTTT Looks to the Internet of Things - novum
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/with-30-million-more-in-hand-ifttt-looks-to-the-internet-of-things/
======
idlewords
IFTTT strikes me as the canonical example of a useful, small project that
people would pay for that instead got stars in its eyes. For the moment, it's
a great example of venture capitalists subsidizing a useful adapter cable for
Internet services. But I get nervous when infrastructure gets delusions of
grandeur. If 'cron' suddenly acquired a staff of 40, I would start looking for
alternatives.

~~~
ericHosick
> If 'cron' suddenly acquired a staff of 40, I would start looking for
> alternatives.

How accessible is Cron to people?

For the consumer, almost all aspects of computing are becoming ubiquitous:
except programming. Tools like those provided by IFTTT are enabling people to
do more with their devices.

Someday, programming will also be ubiquitous (it probably won't even be called
programming anymore).

~~~
x0x0
fair enough, but how many people who can't setup cron need ifttt's
functionality? I'm somewhat skeptical.

And even if they do need ifttt, investors need to turn that $30m into $300m.
It's almost a sure bet -- unless you believe that somehow advertising is going
to pay the bills -- that ifttt will start taxing users, publishers, or both.
Which will end up sucking for all of us. Too bad craigslist didn't implement
this...

~~~
frankdenbow
There are lots of folks, who are not developers, who would want to send a
linkedin invite to every new twitter follower, or get emails about the top
apps in the app store, or log all your text messages to google drive. Heck,
developers who don't want to spend the time to build and maintain a system
would use it also.

Check out their recipes for a better understanding of how people are using the
service: [https://ifttt.com/recipes](https://ifttt.com/recipes)

Agreed on your second point.

------
jeswin
> While IFTTT’s dream is for all companies to play nicely together via its
> open platform...

A closed-source integration service is not an open platform, and this is
especially relevant when it is an integration platform. I am betting (and
building something towards the same ends) on more people embracing and
promoting open alternatives than at any time before. IFTTT's market is huge.
There are millions of programmers around the world who'll never write any code
outside work, and they vastly outnumber the rest of us. The next step in open
and free software will be making coding, forking and deploying apps as easy as
editing Wikipedia.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> The next step in open and free software will be making coding, forking and
> deploying apps as easy as editing Wikipedia.

Github?

~~~
benologist
Even better: Github + Heroku Button (or similar but more open)

[https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/8/7/heroku-
button](https://blog.heroku.com/archives/2014/8/7/heroku-button)

~~~
hk__2
Dokku?

------
nreece
@Pinboard: "Right now the IFTTT business model is to charge one user $30M,
rather than lots of users $2. The challenge will be with recurring payments"

[https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/505081162264363008](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/505081162264363008)

~~~
pinaceae
Maciej hit the nail on the head here. Funding does not equal working business
model (yet).

------
LokiMH
My personal feelings on IFTTT after using it are that it has a massive
potential as an incredible handy tool. However, at the moment the focus seems
to be primarily on social media interaction and optimization. This is all well
and good, but I would love to see more integration with the features of my
Android device.

At this precise moment an example is not jumping to mind, but I know several
times now I have seen a trigger option in the list that I could make use of
but could not find listed the universal Android feature I wanted to use as the
resultant action.

Conversely when trying to create rules for something like having my phone
muted in a specific location I had to create two triggers: First a trigger to
mute my phone upon entering a location and Second a trigger to turn volume up
upon leaving a certain location. Standing back to look at what I was trying do
it is easy to understand that yes there are two Ifs that I want my phone to
react to (entering an area and leaving it) but having the option to choose
"while in area" or "while outside of area" would be great. I think this comes
down to a difference between literal if This action then That action and if
This idea then That action.

IFTTT is clearly programmed how it operates rather than how people tend to
think. As someone that has done programming, I get that and can work with it,
but it doesn't seem the ideal model for use by the average person.

All this having been said I think it is a fun, wonderful gadget and I look
forward to seeing how it grows. Now if only I could figure out why my triggers
have been failing of late...

~~~
angryasian
I think what you're looking for is tasker
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch.android.taskerm&hl=en)

~~~
aw3c2
Or the free-of-cost Llama
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kebab.Llam...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kebab.Llama)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Not quite free, includes in app purchases.

~~~
aw3c2
Yes, free. I don't even know what _additional_ features you can buy, I just
use the free app.

------
kenrose
Was going to ask how IFTTT differs from Zapier, then found the following
article somewhat useful:

[http://blog.matt.thomm.es/post/63394262428/zapier-versus-
if-...](http://blog.matt.thomm.es/post/63394262428/zapier-versus-if-this-then-
that)

In case others had the same question.

~~~
bellerocky
The Zapier founder's primary talent seems to be self-promotion (and they built
a cool thing too). They've managed to land guest articles on Techcrunch, I
heard they ask other new founders to mention Zapier on YC demo days, I have
seem them exploit rivalry among competitors to get them all signed up (X is on
Zapier, maybe you should be too), and they've put a lot into the SEO
optimization of their pages, generating nearly unique landing pages for every
possible combination of the services they offer. This is not criticism, this
is praise. I'm kind of in awe.

I've never tried IFTTT, but I have used Zapier and the service is pretty good.
My take is that engineers can set up scripts that can connect APIs themselves,
which has benefits and drawbacks. Like it takes time to build a script that
does this, and you have to keep it up to date as those APIs change, but on the
other hand Zapier and probably IFTTT's integrations are very shallow and don't
allow you to do much automatic processing of data.

~~~
snoman
> Zapier and probably IFTTT's integrations are very shallow and don't allow
> you to do much automatic processing of data.

Given their target market, I see that as their competitive advantage. It's all
too easy to appeal to the very technical, and allow them to plugin scripts and
filters and whatnot into the pipeline, but by reducing all of that complexity
down to "if this, then that" they are much more approachable by a huge
audience.

------
ceejayoz
@Pinboard: "Maybe the $30 M will allow IFTTT to stop asking people for their
Pinboard passwords, and use the API token"

[https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/505031713681330176](https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/505031713681330176)

~~~
johns
Pinboard has 24K active users[0]. I have some inside info (having previously
worked at IFTTT 2 years ago) that this number is significantly less people
than use most of IFTTT's channels. It's one of the early channels and taking
the time to fix it and migrate everyone is probably not justified for such a
small audience.

Also, if Pinboard really wants it updated, add OAuth and contact IFTTT. They
have a better solution for them.

[0]:
[https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/](https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/)

~~~
idlewords
It's not a question of migrating anything. The first thing IFTTT does with the
password is make an API call to get the API token, and then supposedly throw
the password away.

This is literally a request for them to change the name of an input field, and
make one less API call. I'm happy to drive to their office and implement it
myself if they feel they lack the resources.

------
carsonreinke
Too bad they don't open their platform up without requiring official
partnership.

~~~
lazerwalker
This exactly. I understand why they haven't done it, but the number of things
I'd love to build as a hobbyist if only I could get a REST endpoint to trigger
or enter a webhook URL to receive actions...

~~~
kevinebaugh
We're building a way for others to build and take ownership of their Channels:
[https://ifttt.com/platform](https://ifttt.com/platform) Hobby or personal
Channels are an interesting idea!

~~~
eli
A generic REST Endpoint action and a generic Webhook trigger would pretty much
do it, but I can imagine why you wouldn't want to offer that.

~~~
gdilla
Would pubnub or dweet.io work for you?

------
jazzychad
And _still_ no webhooks - [http://blog.jazzychad.net/2012/08/05/ifttt-needs-
webhooks-st...](http://blog.jazzychad.net/2012/08/05/ifttt-needs-webhooks-
stat.html)

This one thing would blow up usage by developers across the board.

~~~
scintill76
"There's a big strategic risk in you guys offering web hooks: it facilitates
competitors piggybacking on your event detection and building high value
response services that compete directly with your own. In other words, you
become a piece of costly-to-maintain middleware and others capture the real
consumer value." \--
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4344335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4344335)

In other words, something like webhooks hurts the bottom line of this "open
platform" (quote from OP.) Maybe IFTTT is only useful because a lot of the
services it consumes don't make it easy to do these things, because it would
diminish their own value. It's greedy walled gardens all the way down.

~~~
speleding
Their main competitor Zapier.com does offer web hooks, in an open fashion, so
I'm not sure that argument still holds.

Also, there is still a lot of value that can be added by the middleware
besides repeated polling, such as filtering and facilitating easy setup

------
scintill76
Anyone else want the phrase "internet of things" to die? I guess it's not
rational, but it just bugs me more and more every time it comes up. Too buzz-
wordy or something.

------
namityadav
IFTTT is at a great spot to bring simple programming & logic to non-
programmers who just want to customize how they interact with technology just
a little bit. Looks like Yahoo Pipes missed a big opportunity there.

However, the IFTTT homepage and WTF page are still too complicated for a
casual visitor. The WTF page throws all these terms like Channels, Triggers,
Actions, Ingredients, Recipes, etc instead of focusing on telling the visitor
what they can do with IFTTT. The name (If This Then That) is amazing for
explaining what IFTTT is. But, beyond that, they seem to be making things look
more complicated than they need to be.

~~~
nmjohn
I completely agree - I don't necessarily know what better would exactly look
like - but explaining the why as opposed to the what is a great place to
start.

IFTTT really is not that complicated, it is something that many people
realistically could utilize, even if they aren't very tech savy. Something as
simple as a beginner mode which hides everything except complete recipes from
the user might go a long way in appealing to a broader user base.

------
afro88
Interesting no one mentioned Huginn [1]. It's open, and perfect for "internet
of things" stuff. I've done some of the basic IOT stuff that's mentioned in
the article with Huginn (open doors at specific times, turn on lights etc).

Sure it might not be as pretty as IFTTT (and I'm sure however IFTTT implement
interfaces for IOT stuff will look great.. $30MM great) but they're working on
it.

[1] [http://github.com/cantino/huginn](http://github.com/cantino/huginn)

~~~
clockwerx
The UI needs more love and kittens. I should really get off my butt and send
in more PRs though :(

------
phireph0x
Number one feature request for IFTTT: support multiple conditions, i.e. if
this AND this AND this then that

As is stands now, for me, IFTTT is cute (I've played around with the app and
website) but not really useful for many things without multiple conditions.

------
beamatronic
I developed an IFTTT integration in the last couple of weeks. Their support
team was very helpful. They even shared some sample code with me via GitHub.
Their documentation was great and I really liked their built in regression
test.

------
ruff
I'd bet $100M on IFTTT if I had it. They've got an amazing ecosystem of often
proprietary devices and services feeding event information into them.

v1 is rules by end-users—v10 intelligence by the system.

What if they could take that data and create concepts around the identity of
people using those devices, where they are at certain times, what they're
doing, etc. etc. Turn all that data around and broker it back to
services/devices, making each of the providers that much more powerful but
dependent upon IFTTT. It's super-charging the internet of things in a way that
perhaps only Google (with Google Now) seems to be thinking.

~~~
amirmc
... and that's one reason why I won't use it for anything meaningful. I'm
tired of my digital activities simply becoming fodder for a third party's data
mining.

------
joshdance
How is IFTTT going to make money?

~~~
idlewords
You must be new here!

~~~
joshdance
Not new, just hoping they don't go away or get acquired and dumped. :)

------
willhinsa
Hopefully this happens:

Google Now integration

Answer whether I need an umbrella today (will have to know where I work, when
I go to work, lunch, home.)

Currently I can only build an alert on whether it'll rain tomorrow. I end up
having to check Google Now, and sliding across the hours of the day to make a
judgment about whether it's worth it or not to bring an umbrella.

------
bluetidepro
Congrats to IFTTT. I really love all the integrations they have going for
them. They are making some great progress with their product.

Slightly off topic, but has anyone figured out a good way to use IFTTT to do
"If this _AND_ this then that" type of recipes?

~~~
wlesieutre
I especially want that for scheduling of recipes. Right now they run all the
time, but there are definitely things I only want to run at specific times on
specific days. For instance:

"If it's 7:00 AM [AND] it's a weekday [AND] the forecast is rain [THEN] Tell
me to bring an umbrella" would be much more useful to me than getting
notifications every time it's going to rain.

As it stands now with a single condition, I don't can't come up with much I
want to do with IFTTT.

------
JoeAtArrayent
IFTTT is in an excellent position to help users and the IoT industry solve the
problem of non-standardization of clouds/APIs. For now they just enable a lot
of simple "recipes", but they can now go WAY BEYOND this and make the
"everything app" that let's me view/control/mashup all of my devices and
social media, etc. Having the huge ecosystem already nailed down puts them so
far ahead of everybody. I would pay for this app, but many will not. They
could be a great acquisition play for a company that wants to dominate at this
layer and is late to the game.

------
Havoc
Using IFTTT strikes me as a bit of a security risk or am I missing something?

------
SilasX
Wow, I'm amazed by the progress. I remember when IFTTT was above the
DevBootcamp hq on 5th and Market and I stopped by to visit (which would have
been early-mid 2012). I remember the cute dog and still have some craigslist
alerts going that I set up shortly after. Also remember talking about their
goal of getting the average person to do programming-like tasks in terms of
setting up chains of conditionals and actions.

Also, the name still makes me think of Riften from Skyrim.

------
Discrete
Having developed a couple of "wearable" computing products, I can appreciate
what IFTTT offers for early adopting consumers. Most companies making new
products don't have the time to work on too many integrations (not to mention
all the contractual stuff to even be able to start). They give the early
adopter a way around at least some of that problem, and I know a significant
number of users appreciate that.

------
tmarthal
What is interesting to me is that IFTTT is running as a cloud platform, yet
some of these devices won't be accessible outside the wireless LAN. I wonder
if they are going to have to create a hardware piece, software service or
something that communicates to their servers and translates the scripted
commands and relevant statuses.

But also, this is a huge market and someone needs to do this.

------
chickenandrice
I really like automators like IFFT as they save the time from having to yet
again keep up with breaking API changes from crappy company xyz (ex:
Facebook). The problem with all of them seems they don't actually work
reliably.

I tried IFFT a number of times. I'd love for it to work, but I only use it as
a "it's ok if this breaks, missing data, etc." tool. Admittedly this is not
100% their fault as you are at the mercy of the shoddiness of other APIs, but
bugs upon bugs and the less than reliable nature of IFFT actually executing
things in a timely, durable manner makes it 100x less useful and impossible to
build on top of for real apps.

I also feel that from a business point of view, relying on other people's
services is consistently a trap. Whether it's social networks like Twitter,
COTS like SharePoint, or something like Evernote, it's always a trap. These
businesses can break your code at any time they choose, shut off your service,
or simply go under. It takes a lot of work circumventing their bugs and
terrible APIs as well. Hats off for trying, but I don't feel like a company
like this is usually a good long-term investment.

Add to these problems the fact that most internet "typical" users would never
use IFFT or "get it" the way it's presented today. Moreover, most programmers
want more control, something more powerful, or can just do everything here
better themselves exactly to their use cases. Not seeing how this company is
worth much even if it is "useful." Profitable != useful many times.

------
rrggrr
IFTT and Zapier are two of the most exciting companies to watch in tech right
now. Why? Because automation and programming are still inaccessible to most
people, but the need and interest is widespread. IFTT and Zapier, both of
which I use, are racing for breadth of services they integrate as opposed to
depth of a service's API they expose/support. I think that is a mistake. I
also believe the first of the two to support industrial devices, a robust
security model and open source hardware will run dominate the space. There are
only so many Mailchimp, Salesforce, Google Docs integrations of value - but
infinite use cases for device integration. On this score perhaps IFTT has a
lead. IFTT and Zapier are what, IMHO, Apple's Automator should have been. I
think Apple may have missed the mark throwing resources at Swift, when the
much larger market is end-user integrations. I might add applications like
Tasker and Locale on Android add a ton of value to those platforms, at the
expense of the iPhone, and Apple remains largely absent on the integration
front.

------
abad79
IFTTT looks like a great concept that will be replicated in the near future
from other services following the massive growth that the internet of things,
specially wearable devices will bring to the internet ecosystem.

------
zubairov
Very interesting... paid IFTTT account, I'm quite sceptical about that, I
would expect the licensing contracts with Philips, Belkin, et al. are the main
revenue source and will remain to be it in future...

------
brettcvz
Requisite comment on these sorts of posts - we are hiring for positions across
the board: [https://ifttt.com/jobs](https://ifttt.com/jobs)

It's a fun place with cool stuff going on.

------
digitalsurgeon
IFTTT surely has a lot of potential. IOT device management might become a
problem for normal users, if IOT does become mainstream in the future.

The normal scenarios which we can think of right now for example coming home
and things turn on to appropriate settings, blocking phones during meetings
etc are surely easy for us to understand, but my parents if they figure these
things out and can setup such tasks them selves, I see a huge market and use
for such services. It is still too geeky for normal people, it needs to
provide use cases for normal folks not just tweeps or facebook generation.

IFTTT needs the money, their servers used to be slow when I last used it.

