

Site Lets You Simulate a Facebook Hack, Goes Viral at PennApps - gailees
http://techland.time.com/2012/09/19/site-lets-you-simulate-a-facebook-hack-goes-viral-at-pennapps

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thekevan
I really don't understand the difference between this app and me posting a
status on Facebook saying I am pregnant, then coming back later and saying,
"I'm not pregnant, I got hacked."

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gailees
It's a lot quicker, and we've already done the work for you.

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polkunus
Wow, anything gets in the press these days. It's a 20 min, 1 page website. Get
over it guys.

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gailees
Have you tried it....it's actually quite a good time :)

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tlrobinson
Says the guy who made it...

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gailees
I built this product, because several times I wished something like it
existed; now, I enjoy using it.

Yes, I'm biased, but I didn't just build this app just to build it; I built it
for my own use, and I think it's fun to use :)

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mattberg
i am confused, why would you want to do that to your own Facebook account???

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flatline
As someone who is older than the college age crowd, it seems pretty inane. I'm
sick of political posts so would probably ignore those in someone else's feed.
Having kids or dropping out of school to do a startup don't sound like crazy
ideas to me, either. I actually think the idea is pretty funny, but the
options are unimaginative, or perhaps I'm just too far distant from the target
demographic.

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gailees
We've had a pretty good response so far with our current options while at the
same time being able to stay away from any profane, offensive, or really
malicious content; however, we would love to have expanded options for other
target demographics outside of college students.

Do you have any ideas for options that would be more well-targeted at your
demographic?

We already personalize options to some of the user's basic fb info, but have
yet to come up with buttons that we think other specific age groups would be
more likely to use.

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flatline
I probably don't have any real gems but generally, non-sequitur stuff that
_clearly_ wasn't an intentional post is the most funny, as it jumps out an
makes you wonder what the hell is going on. Promotion of weird/bad products,
i.e. spam. The 4chan FB hacks from that christian message board a couple years
back were actually pretty funny, albeit juvenile and insulting. Maybe the
heuristic would be that a good percentage of one's friends think you were
hacked without you knowing about it, but nothing too shocking or harmful. Just
my $.02, I did think it was a neat idea.

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johnpmayer
Wow. As somebody who has participated in PennApps in the past and actually
visited this year for the Friday night kickoff, let me just say that it is a
damn shame that this is getting so much of a negative reaction because there
are so many other great projects that came out this year.

[https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/pennapps-
fall-2012/h...](https://www.hackerleague.org/hackathons/pennapps-
fall-2012/hacks)

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gailees
How are we clowns? People actually use and enjoy using what we built at
PennApps; why should that be looked down upon?

We had fun building our hack, and people have fun using it.

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johnpmayer
So let me retract that after reading some of the other posts - in the end what
you guys did was still pretty slick and I'm sure you learned a lot. So sorry
for being reactionary myself.

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gailees
Thank you. I'm glad you understand. We weren't trying to downplay any of the
other apps at all; our app just caught some traction, and we were happy about
that.

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staceyisboss
Sometimes I wonder if this kind of thing is a complete waste of talent. Smart
kids, wasting it on stupid webpages.

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gailees
I mean....if nothing else, we are learning from the experience, but I
definitely don't think it's a waste of our time.

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staceyisboss
But it is because no one will ever even use it.... spend time on something
that people will use or that has meaning

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freehunter
I wrote a Hello World program today. No one will ever use it, so must have
been a waste of my time. All along I thought I was building experience and
learning the language.

You're on the wrong site if you think utility is a factor in choosing a
project to work on. The hacker mindset is that a project is worth doing just
because it's possible to do it, not necessarily because there's any good
reason.

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gailees
Hellllll yeah....this is exactly the mindset that we need to promote in
students to inspire them to hack with passion.

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gailees
TIME decided to write about our shift from Buddy Hack to Hack My Facebook

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gailees
Our new pivot doesn't include any of the encouragement against the spirit of
the Facebook platform or the fake "defriend all" button that our original app
contained.

