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.
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).
Startup projects at bigger companies could be just as risky as a startup company. Where do you draw the line on requiring such a warning? It doesn't sound realistic to me.
While I don't think forcing private companies to reveal this information is right, a legal requirement to support data exports (including for up to 30 days after the announcement of a closure) seems in society's interest.
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.
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?
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Any site wanting to position itself as a backbone of the open & safe net ought to itself be open source and have support for data import/export into a self-hosted installation.
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.
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.
Related: Consider http://Pinboard.in with the yearly plan offering Personal Archiving. Anything pinned (bookmarked) gets archived and you can view it from your personal archive.
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?
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.
This post reflects an attitude that is a shining example of so many things wrong in the startup community, from the sense of entitlement...
Well, yes, when you invest in your data, you feel entitled to it. I would argue you are entitled to it.
Which is why Advection, as a streaming VOD provider, has maintained -- at our own expense -- license servers for users who bought movies from content owners that went out of business up to a decade ago. We believe in digital ownership, and believe that non-evaporative content principles are good for the whole ecosystem.
I applaud any archiving efforts that help end users have a greater sense of trust in future digital products.
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?
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.
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.
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.
> Hugspoon competes with Punchfork by stealing its data and giving no value in return.
How are they competing with it? Punchfork is gone. Isn't it Pinterest's fight now? I doubt that a term of the acquisition was "personally deal with people who are copying the Punchfork data".
I'm sorry, are you saying that stealing from larger companies is okay? Anyway, I'm done here. This behavior is scandalous, rude and shameful. I don't think I need to defend this view point anymore than I already have.
Eh, I think your viewpoint is clouded by your friendship with Jeff Miller. You "know" that his motives are pure, because you think he is a good person. But this is not at all clear for someone who doesn't know him, especially if you look at the initial messaging about the Punchfork acquisition.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
That's precisely the point, isn't it? Right now there's no incentive for them to care. The percentage of users who care about open data right now is pretty small, mostly confined to the very tech-savvy. Maybe this punchfork acquisition kerfuffle can be used to teach non-tech-savvy users the importance of open data. An open, free recipe database - importantly, that follows the punchfork model of not including instructions, so the actual recipe sites still get traffic - is a step in that direction.
>>>>> large amount of work into scraping those sites.
C'mon man! It's 2103. Not only are scrappers ridiculously easy to build, it doesn't take a ton of work to build a bot in Perl and have it scan the internet for recipe's.
This guy is a total d-bag. Not sure what his deal is, or was, but everything I've read makes me not like him at all. Did he get screwed out of a ton of cash with the acquisition or what?
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.