
Punchfork shutdown inspires Open Recipes - shiflett
http://blog.fictivekin.com/post/46860403233/the-jokes-on-us
======
guelo
Startups that are based on user-contributed content are based on fraud in the
sense that they imply to their users that the contributed data will always be
available. But it's a lie, the user's data is only being used to explore a
potential market. If the market idea proves successful the company will be
sold and shutdown. If the idea is unsuccessful it will also be shutdown.

Startups should be required to tell users upfront with a big warning that the
business is not profitable, how many months of runway the startup has, and
that all data could be lost at any point.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
No. Private companies should not have to disclose their runway or
profitability as this gives competitors insight into the market. Imagine if
Pandora plastered a big notice on their signup that says they're not
profitable so beware of creating new channels because who knows what will
happen. Same is true for Facebook in the early days. It's just unnecessary and
business should not be conducted by trying to optimize users away from your
product. Of course, I like when companies are fair about how they go about
their shut down (e.g. Posterous with ample time to backup your content and go
elsewhere).

------
ChuckMcM
Hmm, correct me if I'm wrong but Punchfork scraped their recipe content from
other sites? Is it possible there is a data tainting issue here? Hard to
reconcile Jeff's comments about user archive and the stuff on the web site,
but that said I wasn't a user so I don't know if they sent an email with a
download link or something.

~~~
mikeflynn
I'm a registered user and they did not do any notification. I didn't even know
it was shut down until seeing this link.

~~~
jedschmidt
I (and all Punchfork users, I assume) received a notification on January 3rd,
including the following:

    
    
        Initially, support for Punchfork will continue, but
        we will soon be retiring the Punchfork site, API and
        mobile apps. We believe that a unified destination
        benefits our users in the long run, and the Punchfork
        team (me) will focus on contributing to Pinterest as
        the premier platform for discovering and sharing new
        recipes and other interests on the web.
    

EDIT: Gmail binned this email in "Promotions"... I wonder if that explains why
some didn't see it?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Hmm, nothing about where you could download your data from?

~~~
bvttf
Jason Scott may be your only hope:
<https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/313386087802351616>

------
beseku
Interesting that this is written by one half of the Analog Folk/Fictive Kin
co-op.

These guys are responsible for Mapalong, a (formally great) mapping service
that they abandoned early last year and for which they ignore any requests for
exported data (I've been asking for a .KML file for a year to move my points
somewhere else).

~~~
shiflett
Mapalong is still in private beta, but it's otherwise alive and well. It's a
huge bummer that you think otherwise. I'm sure you're not alone.

We have had to pause development, but not only is your data still there, you
can still use it. New users can't join, but that's about it.

As soon as we're able, we want to finish it and launch it. As part of this,
we'll make sure people can get their data out in useful formats. (Perhaps a
GeoRSS feed per URL? A KML file per user?)

I genuinely respect you for holding us to a high standard, but I think it's a
little unfair to criticize us for an unfinished app.

~~~
beseku
I'm sorry if you feel it's unfair, but it's hard not to jump to such
conclusions when the Twitter account is dead and nothing (visibly) changes.

It would certainly make people feel better if, with slowly progressing
software, it was made easier for these testers to feel like they could
properly test such software with the full knowledge that they can get their
investment out in the form of a reasonable export function - they are after
all providing a service to you by testing the software and providing feedback.

~~~
shiflett
It's cool. Like I said, I'm sure you're not alone.

Also, you make a very good point. We never expected to have to pause, but we
should have put more focus on making sure people never felt their data was
trapped, even in the very beginning.

In fact, you've managed to convince me that proper data export should be the
very next feature we add.

------
jedschmidt
As a fairly regular user of Punchfork, I definitely wish it were still around,
but this feels self-entitled.

Let's not forget that the data Punchfork is letting users take out is the
exact information they put in: a list of liked recipes. The original recipe
data is just one click away.

I'm not sure how this is any different than a personal Twitter archive; it
contains only your tweets, not those of the folks you interacted with.

------
hafabnew
Lovely subtext in the last section.

Good on you guys for not rising to Jeff's stubborn/dismissive attitude.

~~~
oalders
> “If you think it is easy to build, feel free to replicate it yourself.”

>We were super inspired by Jeff’s “teach a man to fish” attitude...

This left me with tears in my eyes. :)

------
lessnonymous
You young 'uns. Do you not remember S.O.A.R.?

SOAR had its beginnings in 1993 when someone collected all the recipes she
found on Usenet and mailing lists while at UCB.

In 1995 she put the archive on the web as "SOAR" .. the "Searchable Online
Archive of Recipies".

In 2001, that moved from (IIRC) a subdomain of UCB and became "Recipe Source"
and can still be found at <http://www.recipesource.com/>

It's very old now, and majorly lacking in features. But then I've never found
a recipe site that gave me everything I needed.

------
CurtMonash
On Usenet in the 1990s, people used to whine if they weren't given attribution
for the work they did scanning and uploading somebody else's published porn
photographs.

Punchfork's attitude here seems similar.

------
morsch
Has anybody ever succeeded in applying the distributed development approach
(forking, pull requests, multiple branches and variations) to recipes?

~~~
rhizome
I don't think recipes hew very well to that model. Revisions aren't as
important as variations, which means each would be a branch, which is
unwieldy.

------
shiflett
We're in #openrecipes on Freenode if anyone would like to join us.

------
eah13
I could see posthaven turning into an API that any site could integrate with
so that users knew their data was safe. Depending on the site and type of user
data, this type of exportability/backupability could be a real differentiating
feature.

~~~
tlrobinson
Idea: a browser extension that automatically scrapes and archives your data as
you browse a site. Power-users can submit scrapers for new/modified sites.

Normally scrapers can be detected and blocked, but if it's passively running
in the background on a user's machine, opportunistically grabbing data the
user is already viewing, it should be impossible to detect.

~~~
garry
This is a great idea. I've actually wanted to do this before. Browser plugins
are one fundamental tool in the war against web tyranny. For instance,
crawling Craigslist could be accomplished this way in a way that was
unblockable.

This needs to exist.

------
akent
I'm surprised the ArchiveTeam / archive.org scrape of Punchfork before it was
removed didn't also get a mention in all this mess.

<http://archive.org/details/archiveteam_punchfork>

------
anonfunction
I hear a lot of grief about companies shutting down. And I get it, if I spent
a lot of time on Punchfork or Google Reader I would be bummed out.

However I can still see the good that will come, yummly already jumped at
creating an API replacement much like feedly promises to be an alternative for
google reader.

By the way, is ending your startup in "ly" the new fad in the technosphere?

~~~
phereford
Ending in .ly was really popular 2 years back (bit.ly, embed.ly, etc etc).
It's still popular, but it has waned since .ly was publicly available.

I think the fad has since passed and a lot of people have been jumping on the
.io bandwagon recently.

~~~
ersii
Don't forget the "try to use the TLD bit to make the end of your word"-fad :-)
Like doing "hackerne.ws" - not exactly new, but a rising star fad.

~~~
anonfunction
Haha never knew about that one, easier to type on my phone.

------
earbitscom
I long ago stopped replying to posts and comments that anger me for their
negativity and bullshit, but none has made me as furious as this one.

Disclaimer: After reaching out to him cold, Jeff Miller was an informal
advisor to me for over a year providing valuable insights and advice, not to
mention moral support, as we built our company. He did this for no reason
other than his dedication to helping a fellow entrepreneur. Over dozens of
email exchanges and in-person get togethers, he proved hands down, to be one
of the most helpful, friendly, altruistic people I've met in the valley. After
a year building up this friendship and trust, he invested in our company, and
he is consistently one of the first people I reach out to when I have real
founder issues to discuss.

The OP has literally ZERO idea what reasons Jeff has for his decisions about
the data on his site, not the least of which could be legal restrictions of
the acquisition. They provided, what looks like, ZERO background on why they
wanted to talk to someone who was incredibly busy transitioning a startup into
the hands of a new parent company. Jeff was as polite as he needed to be when
he responded to a completely context-less request for a call with, "I'm sorry
I can't right now." The OP does not know, beyond building a startup worth
acquiring, and transitioning it, what else someone might have on their plate
that would prevent them from having time to chat with someone who failed to
provide any reason for their request. Then, when Jeff asked point blank
whether the OP was scraping data from his site, they responded with an
ambiguous, "not trying to do anything uncool. Still super eager to talk more.
Happy to do so anytime."

The OP apparently does not have to _try_ to do something uncool. This entire
situation is unbelievably uncool, from the beginning of the communication, to
their actions in between, to this post. The only thing more shocking than the
sense of entitlement displayed here, is that they, or anybody here, thinks
this post documents anything other than a pure display of arrogance and
entitlement by the OP. They approached this whole situation with such a stark
lack of professionalism that it would be laughable if they hadn't also decided
to smear one of the nicest people I know in the process.

This post reflects an attitude that is a shining example of so many things
wrong in the startup community, from the sense of entitlement, to the lack of
common courtesy, to the manipulation of a situation for personal gain at the
expense of others. It is so unreal how easily people seek to tear down others,
and worse, how quickly smart people jump on the bullshit bandwagon.

This post is a joke. Nobody owes you anything because they built a site you
enjoyed. If anybody owes anybody anything, the OP owes Jeff Miller an apology
for this time wasting bullshit.

~~~
smackfu
People have gotten pretty sick of the web tools they use being acquihired and
shut down. Compound that with the founder being hostile towards Archive Team
scraping their data, and is it any surprise your friend is getting flack?

~~~
earbitscom
Let me clarify what happened here for anybody who couldn't read between the
lines of Fictive Kin's ridiculously biased representation of this situation.

Cameron Koczon hits up Jeff on Twitter asking to talk about Punchfork. Jeff
has just sold Punchfork and most likely has legal obligations prohibiting him
from talking about too much, plus he's busy transitioning the company into a
new parent organization, along with whatever else he has going on in his life.
They don't provide context, or email him with more information. They tell Jeff
to DM them if he wants to talk, as if this now puts the ball in Jeff's court.

Jeff politely responds: "I'm sorry I can't right now." Nothing hostile here.

Then, OP posts a page about Hugspoon. They intend to scrape and replicate
Punchfork's data, in particular its user data. Keep in mind, Jeff's site
generated traffic for the sites he scraped, much like Google does. By not
showing full recipes, Jeff has become a discovery tool for those sites, not a
competitor. Hugspoon will not be providing value to Punchfork, the site it
scrapes, or Pinterest, the site that now owns it. Hugspoon competes with
Punchfork by stealing its data and giving no value in return. OP's claim that
they're doing it for the users doesn't really matter. They are stealing this
data and it is not an apples to apples comparison to say that Punchfork also
scraped data, because it provided significant value to the companies whose
data it shared. Ask any of those sites if they minded.

Jeff asks the OP if they are cloning his site and scraping all of the data. He
says it's extremely uncool if so. So far, not hostile. He has turned down a
context-less request to chat with someone, and has now very level-headedly
responded to a blatant attempt to clone his site and steal his data, competing
with his new parent company and him for the same users.

Cameron Koczon does not answer the question. He evades it and says, "not
trying to do anything uncool. Still super eager to talk more. Happy to do so
anytime."

Let me translate this last part for you. "We have stated publicly we plan to
scrape your data. We'll say we're not doing anything uncool, but that's
because we think "liberating" your site's data is cool. The ball is in your
court to contact us, because you owe us that. Just so you know, we can't wait
to chat with you!"

Jeff responds. "Please do not scrape any data from PF for your product. I'm
asking you unequivocally and in public. OK?"

Yet again, I see absolutely nothing hostile on Jeff's part so far. In fact, if
someone insisted _I contact them_ in order to find out more about what they
want to talk to me about, and then posted a note saying they intend to pull
all of my data, I'd say asking for clarification and a confirmation that they
are _not_ going to do that is pretty fucking cordial.

Then Cameron says he will email Jeff in the AM. Four days later, Jeff has to
ask if he's going to get an email about this clone site that the OP has
publicly announced. Cameron responds that he "ran out of steam" and was away
for the weekend. Apparently, him being busy is a perfectly good excuse to
leave a big issue out in the open un-addressed, but Jeff being busy isn't
enough of a reason to send the guy more context about your plans in an email
before announcing publicly your bullshit intentions to rip his site off.

And now there is the article on Fictive Kin, which could not be more
ironically headed with the tagline "Work Hard. Be Nice." by people who are
going to scrape all of the data they want from a single site, while bullying
the site's owner into dealing with them in the way that they expect him to.
The post criticizes Jeff's acquisition announcement as callous, an opinion of
theirs that I didn't share when I got the same notification. I use Punchfork
all of the time. They criticize the "ominous shutdown banner", which I imagine
was intended to alert users about the site's imminent closing. Had he not
posted such a banner, they would have said he didn't take enough action to
alert users to the site's future. Then, they take their arrogant opinion of
the situation and paraphrase Jeff, saying: “We’re excited to share the news
that we’re gonna be rich! To celebrate, we’re shutting down the site and
taking all your data down with it. So long, suckers!”

And as for Archive Team. I assume you're talking about the guys that announced
their own intentions by saying "Injecting terabytes of Punchfork user/recipe
data into <http://archive.org> . Relive the assholery of this goodbye:
<http://punchfork.com/pinterest> ....

Now that we've clarified all of that. Explain to me the part where Jeff is the
hostile one. Explain to me how these aren't a bunch of bitter dicks that saw a
site get acquired, didn't like another company getting bought and absorbed,
and decided to steal all of its data and compete with it, pausing only briefly
to insist that the owner of that site give them a call because they would like
to tell him to his face about their arrogance. Explain to me why Jeff's
request to "Please don't copy any Punchfork data" is a hostile response to
being called an asshole.

I don't know a single level headed person who would look at this communication
outside of the context of Fictive Kin's ridiculous blog post and not think
that these are some of the biggest douchebags on the internet.

~~~
shiflett
I'm surprised you blame us for the way Jeff is perceived. The only thing I
think we could have maybe done better is omit the links to his actual replies.
In retrospect, that might have been better. Our link text is pretty benign,
e.g., "Then, we heard from Jeff."

The story is simple. We offered to save the likes of users who asked us to.
Jeff objected, so we didn't. We offered to save the recipe data and make a
searchable index. Jeff objected, so we didn't. While we might have been
surprised, we complied; we didn't want to ruffle any feathers.

I can only imagine that you either object to the fact that we started the Open
Recipes project or that we shared the story behind it. Either way, I'm afraid
I just don't care. If there are exactly two people who think we did something
wrong here, and lots of people who support what we're doing, then I think we
chose wisely.

Also, you can't truthfully claim that anything we're doing is competing with
Punchfork. (It was shut down at the end of March, before the Open Recipes
project existed.) Not that there's anything wrong with competition.

~~~
earbitscom
Your link text is benign, set between accusations and hyperbole. You could
have emailed Jeff with context on what you were thinking. You didn't. You
tweeted asking him to DM you about a conversation _you_ wanted to have, not
him. He told you he was busy. You could have emailed him context then, you
didn't. You posted a page publicly saying you planned to save a bunch of the
data from his site. He asked you if you were planning to scrape his data and
said he thought doing so was uncool. You didn't answer the question. You said
you weren't doing anything uncool, which is a matter of opinion, not a
clarification of fact, and again acted as though it was his responsibility to
pursue clarification from you.

Your approach was wholly unprofessional. The reason it pissed me off is
because I know what kind of person Jeff is to those entrepreneurs who approach
him professionally, respectful of his time. He is completely approachable,
super friendly, and incredibly generous with his time. The reason he wasn't
here is because your approach lacked common courtesy and respect. You acted as
if he owed it to you to reach out and discuss _your_ project. He doesn't. Then
you all but slandered him in your post, paraphrasing him with things like "So
long, suckers," which is something that anybody who knows Jeff knows could not
be further from his attitude about anything.

I'm glad you came around to respecting Jeff's request. It's too bad you didn't
approach the situation as reasonably from the beginning. I get tired of seeing
good people have their name tarnished around the community by people whose
sense of entitlement leads them to paint a one-sided picture of someone who
has worked so hard to contribute to the community, simply because they didn't
get what they wanted, how they wanted it.

I don't think having an easily incited mob of trolls supporting your view
validates what you've done. I think if you take a step back and look at the
situation subjectively, you'd realize you owe Jeff an apology.

------
blantonl
So yet another business gets it's start by only using content from another
site(s) via data scraping, and they are upset that their source of content was
acquired and shutdown? Cry me a river...

This reminds me of the Craigslist/Pad-Mapper event, except that Craigslist
hasn't been acquired.

~~~
michael_h
I think you may have misread. The article is upset because his _user data_ is
being taken away. Punchfork acquired their data by scraping recipe publishers.
Hugspoon wanted to liberate the user data by scraping punchfork.

------
davidjhamp
I felt the same way when I first read about the acquisition/shutdown. Like the
idea.

As a replacement I found <http://www.yummly.com/> today.

------
johnnyfever
on a related note, does anyone know whatever happened to foodieview.com? I
lost a lot of recipe links when it unceremoniously disappeared.

------
IheartApplesDix
What exactly is the motivating factor for an acquired website (especially one
acquired by a large successful media company) to care about how you feel with
their service?

>large amount of work into scraping those sites

I think this states clearly the founders attitude about data rights. It's the
Wild West out there still.

~~~
themgt
Yeah, "a lot of work went into scraping those sites, so how dare you scrape
mine!"

Wat?

