
Show HN: Breakup Notifier - theli0nheart
http://www.breakupnotifier.com/
======
theli0nheart
A few days ago, my fiancee and her mom were talking about setting up a nice
guy with my fiancee's sister. Unfortunately, said guy is in a relationship. My
mother-in-law to be suggested it would be nice to know when the relationship
was over (jokingly). I blurted out that I could make something that could do
that in a couple of hours. By then, I knew I had to do it.

The application was built on Google Appengine, Django, and the Facebook Graph
API. I'm checking for status changes every 24 hours, and am using the
Appengine mail service to send emails whenever I notice that a relationship
status has changed.

Seriously, this is mostly a joke. But enjoy, if you do choose to use it for
real.

~~~
phirephly
Only every 24 hours?!? But when the window is open, you RUN! Did Ted Mosby
teach us nothing?

~~~
zalew
+1 for HIMYM reference, I thought the same :)

24hrs is not 'be the first to know', probably all her/his friends will know
that before. When I changed status I had a dozen comments in SECONDS.

------
fookyong
Free Version Notification Email:

 _X is now single._

Paid Version Notification Email (with semantic analysis!):

 _X is now single.

She broke up with her boyfriend because he didn't pay enough attention to her.

Lately she has been listening to Arcade Fire and eating cupcakes.

Click to phone X now - suggest getting a cupcake together._

~~~
prawn
'Click here to update your status to talk about how much you like the new
Arcade Fire album.'

~~~
Cafesolo
"Buy the latest Arcade Fire album now." (Amazon affiliate link)

~~~
sudonim
If you haven't seen it...

<http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com/>

An amusing reaction to their winnings at the grammys

~~~
sudonim
Odd. I wonder why I got downvoted. I don't make money if people go to that
website. My grammar (afaik) was correct. It seemed to relate to the comment
above. I will just remain at a loss and move on.

------
jarin
This is the most pointless, trivial, absurd, creepy app I've seen in a while.

Signed up.

I think it will be massively successful!

~~~
spxdcz
Reminds me of the creepy Twitter bot I set up a couple of years ago (which is
still going):

<http://twitter.com/reboundfinder>

The account got a mention on MSNBC; I have no idea why.

------
rudiger
A while back, I heard that Facebook can _predict_ when two people in a
relationship are about to break up, based on statistical patterns in account
activity prior to break-ups.

I'm not familiar with the Facebook APIs or what sort of account activity is
statistically significant, but that would be a cool app that's very similar to
this. Log in with Facebook, and show which of your in-a-relationship friends
has the highest probability of breaking up. Obviously harder than a
notification after the break-up, but prediction would be cool and useful.

~~~
redthrowaway
That does sound damned cool, but would facebook give you access to that
information?

~~~
rudiger
Facebook isn't going to provide "probabilityOfBreakUp" in their API, but you
might be able to build a factor model from accessible information; for
instance, number of photos in which a couple are both tagged might be a
statistically significant factor.

~~~
mikeknoop
I think the most significant criteria is how many times one looks at their
profile. Facebook has always been very adamant about technically disallowing
this for apps.

~~~
wisty
No, the most significant criteria will be how many times one looks at
_somebody else's_ profile. IMs and messages would also be quite significant.
But that's even less likely to get released.

------
sudonim
Kudos for releasing the app!

IMHO, Unless you're married, don't put your relationship status on FB. Set it
as hidden, or say nothing. When things change, and in life they do... the
people from whom you don't want to hear are the first to notice and / or
comment on it.

~~~
tjpick
Is marriage more stable than other forms of relationship?

~~~
eftpotrm
Statistically, yes. Not, I suspect, because marriage suddenly confers
stability and harmony onto relationships where none was previously, but
because of a mix of people having to pay a large deposit on the relationship
and of non-marriage relationships getting lumped in with pre-hypothetical-
marriage relationships.

------
meursault
great idea. this is actually how my wife and i met. no joke. i had just ended
a long relationship and changed my status on facebook. she noticed and started
messaging me.

~~~
cynest
People have started relationships on/through Facebook that have turned into
marriages. A bit of a blow to the part of me that thinks of Facebook as new.

------
jschuur
This app is useless until Felicia Day, Scarlett Johansson or Jenna Fischer
accept my friend requests.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Or the flowers you've been sending to their publicists. Or the dead pigeons
you've been leaving out of love (and to send a warning message to others) on
their front porches.

------
kmfrk
The fact that this domain wasn't taken restores some semblance of my faith in
humanity.

~~~
Splines
But now it is. Is your faith zero-sum?

------
kersny
I literally laughed out loud when I saw this... great project. I'd start
checking the Twilio blog (<http://blog.twilio.com/>) for contests and
implement their API to do SMS and Call notifications, you might win something.

~~~
theli0nheart
Hahah, thanks :)

With SMS & Call notifications, this could get really out of control. Just
imagine...a hot girl you like ends her relationship, and with the Twilio API,
Breakup Notifier automatically sets up a "rebound call". Beginning to fear for
my morals.

~~~
ohashi
I give you moral approval. Nobody has to know!

------
paulschreiber
David Weekly did this for MySpace a while back. It was called SingeStat.us:
[http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/05/find-out-when-your-
friends-...](http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/05/find-out-when-your-friends-
become-single/)

~~~
dweekly
Good times that was - Fox Interactive sent me a Cease and Desist a week after
I launched. :)

------
msluyter
Next up, an app to see who's monitoring you on Breakup Notifier... "Three
people are waiting for you to break up! Click here to find out more!"

------
OoTheNigerian
One little suggestion: If two people select themselves, why wait until they
breakup?

~~~
aw3c2
If you mean that the site should say "X is monitoring you", that would be a
big privacy issue since one could simply select all friends and see who is
interested in oneselves.

~~~
estel
Sounds like a feature to be promoted, then.

------
kenmck
Didn't Facebook kill something like this a few years ago?

~~~
theli0nheart
I would be honored to write an app banned by Facebook. One less thing on the
bucket list.

~~~
ojbyrne
I'm wondering why they wouldn't have it as a feature.

------
dotBen
You could take the code base you have written and probably adjust just a few
lines of code to turn it into an app that tells you when a friend dumps you on
Facebook.

This is actually what I thought you had built, and for me would be even more
useful + interesting.

 _(Or, open source the code and let someone else do it)_

~~~
sayemm
Yup, that's what I was thinking too. I'm nearly done working on something just
for that, will post to HN soon

------
jmm
This is hilarious. And fits nicely with the expression, "girls are like
parking spots; the good ones are always taken."

~~~
po
This app is the equivalent of "circling" the lot instead of parking far away.
Would make for good logo inspiration. :-)

~~~
Mz
That's called "vulching" among folks I know. (If you aren't familiar with it,
the word refers to "circling like a vulture" -- at least in this case. A quick
search turns up different uses of the word which are similar but not
identical.)

------
ilteris
I was thinking of building a similar app. it auto posts to your friends wall
on their birthdays. New level in automated relationships.

~~~
wladimir
Yes, wouldn't it be great if mundane stuff such as maintaining relationships
was automated, so that we could focus on the fun and interesting things in
life.

------
CWIZO
Awesome idea!

Do this please: look at my "Interested in" info and only show me people of
that gender.

------
jmslsr
This just came across the news ticker on CNN. Congrats?

~~~
FaceKicker
Second most popular article in CNN's "Tech" category, at the time of posting.

[http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/02/21/facebook.rel...](http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/02/21/facebook.relationship.status/index.html?hpt=Sbin)

Wow, what a quick way to get your name out there... Congrats OP.

------
ses
If I'm honest (and I'm hoping you're welcoming of honest feedback be it
positive or negative), I think this is a ludicrous idea. The problem with
something this polarising is, I fail to see how it could grow into a product
everyone might use, even if it is used begrudgingly. Unless there's something
spectacularly clever that I've missed you're not going to ever win over people
that are in the camp that I'm in and hate the very idea of it. I didn't like
facebook when it came along, but I didn't hate it either. Hence why I
eventually signed up for an account. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess
that you are actually quite a decent developer, and that if this is indeed the
case, please divert your efforts to something more beneficial to yourself
and/or society. There are so many talented developers working on 'quirky' web
and mobile apps who could provide solutions to problems that enhance people's
lives and also stimulate the economy. I'm not saying your efforts aren't
impressive in themselves (if you're going by the andy warhol rubric of
measuring your feedback in inches you've been quite successful already), just
that they show that there's so much more you could do.

------
Cafesolo
The first thing that comes to my mind when I see an opportunity to integrate a
Facebook login button with a website is how to attract traffic from Facebook.

One of the most effective ways is publishing updates to the user's wall.
However in this case it's tricky. You don't want everyone to know that you'll
be notified when Pamela is single.

------
zitterbewegung
One of the problems with this from a social perspective is that people lie
about their relationship status on facebook.

~~~
jhamburger
I don't think people lie about being in relationships (unless it's a joke same
sex heterosexual thing), and they definitely don't lie about breaking up. Sure
some people won't have a status at all but nothing you can do about that.

------
adrianwaj
Good way to jump the queue.

Would work well with facial recognition on beauty.

Another idea: an unfriend notifier. (like with a twitter unfollow notifier)

~~~
synacksynack
Here's a Greasemonkey script for unfriend notifications.

<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/58852>

------
younata
you might want to turn off the django debug stuff.

------
mikeknoop
It looks the the auth breaks if your profile doesn't have certain expected
fields accessible (gender?).

------
jshort
I read the title completely wrong. I recently had an idea for facebook that
breakup notifications. So for instance when its your birthday or someone
decides to upload a photo album and tag you in 10 pictures it is sort of
annoying to receive email/phone notifications one after an other, this app
would simply allow you to set up the ability to put a delay on when you
receive them and it pools them together. So if you get one notification it
would wait x minutes and then it pools all the notifications you get until no
more notifications arrive within x minutes. Then you just get one pretty
notification with all the annoying notifications you would have received one
after another.

------
vchien
Brilliant - FB: college students nationwide began to capitalize on the ability
to catalogue pictures of themselves doing keg stands, and to find out the
relationship status of people they are interested in...

------
TeMPOraL
At the moment of writing this comment, this app has 88 likes and 446 tweets. I
wonder if people don't click "Like" in order not to reveal that they're
interested in using the application ;).

------
bkhl
As a lot of people said already, this is very creepy. Yet, there will be tons
of users who would use this...

By the way, can you get notifications on multiple people? (now, that's really
creepy)

------
jfriedly
Well, if Facebook unblocks you, you might want to look into adding another
feature: relationship creation notifications for specific users.

Target user: People like me that don't check Facebook everyday, but would
still like to receive an email when their friend finally makes it Facebook-
official that him and the girl he's been talking to for weeks are dating.

------
zaidf
I'm thinking the app would have to store the present status on its server in
order to know of a status change. But isn't storing profile data server-side a
violation of FB TOS?

~~~
jarin
You can store data for up to 24 hours, so all you have to do is look for a
change on two consecutive days.

Edit: That was the old policy, the new one lets you store it forever as long
as you try to keep it up to date.

~~~
zaidf
So essentially it is ok to store data infinitely as long as you are updating
it every 24hrs?

~~~
jarin
Er wait, that was an old policy. Here's the new one:

"You may cache data you receive through use of the Facebook API in order to
improve your application’s user experience, but you should try to keep the
data up to date. This permission does not give you any rights to such data."

~~~
cycojesus
"should try" sounds pretty vague and unenforceable.

------
realitygrill
I am absolutely amazed to have read this yesterday, then heard about it again
this morning on a local radio station (I'm from the Midwest). Wow. How's it
holding up?

------
freddealmeida
A fun app but really is this the "kind" of choice we want to make? I'm worried
about these forward-focused apps mean to privacy in the long term.

------
heffay
Just wanted to add a note and say that my local rock radio station (in
Phoenix) mentioned breakupnotifier.com today on the morning show. =)

------
fezzl
If I secretly admire a person, I would've been stalking her profile very
regularly already. This app is not too useful to me personally.

~~~
fedd
and if 10 persons? eh? :) this is when automation comes in

~~~
fezzl
What kind of person admires 10 persons at once?

~~~
fedd
a diversified one :)

------
slig
Who else remembers the singlestat.us? IIRC, facebook killed the service.

~~~
jaredsohn
Fox Interactive killed it and it was for Myspace.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2244475>

~~~
slig
Thanks!

------
audyyy
You could monetize this by charging to see if your SO has used the site

------
thomasdavis
THIS IS GREAT, I SELECTED ABOUT 30 PEOPLE CAN'T WAIT FOR MY EMAILS. WHERE IS
YOUR TWITTER ACCOUNT SO I CAN FOLLOW YOU FOR UPDATES.

I AM SO EXCITED

~~~
sokoloff
I think it's @CapsLock

------
AndyKelley
It's cool to support gay people and all, but if I'm straight I shouldn't have
to look at all the dudes when I'm clicking who I'm interested in.

~~~
bwaldorf
Worst HN comment ever.

~~~
AndyKelley
Huh? There's several hundred people on that list for me. It took 5 minutes to
scroll through and decide which ones to click. It could have taken 2.5
minutes. Clearly this is desirable? If not, please explain.

~~~
sliverstorm
You managed to turn a simple feature request into subtle anti-gay propaganda,
whether you meant it or not.

~~~
AndyKelley
I see. I think people are being too sensitive.

~~~
nailer
Your comment isn't offensive to me, but I it _looks_ like it is because of the
disclaimer, which you don't need.

If you turned:

"It's cool to support gay people and all, but if I'm straight I shouldn't have
to look at all the dudes when I'm clicking who I'm interested in."

into:

"If I'm straight I shouldn't have to look at all the dudes when I'm clicking
who I'm interested in."

I don't think people would misunderstand it.

~~~
rick888
why should he have to be sensitive at all? It's his opinion.

~~~
nailer
To be understood better. People communicate to convey info.

~~~
rick888
I understand this. I'm just sick of the recent trend of silencing the freedom
of speech when it may offend someone.

