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.
Would you be able to use real-time updates for this to avoid polling? http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/user/ I'm not sure if it notifies you on friends changes or just the user that authed your app. I assume the latter.
I will have to add an API to my site http://makeyourgirlfriendhappy.com so people can track for breakups as well. Great idea though, definitely relationship 2.0
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.
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.
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.
I even joined the group "I have never had sex with a goat" just so I could leave it at the same time I set my relationship status from "single" to undisclosed. Unfortunately, they got rid of that feature where it would broadcast to all of your friends that you've left a group...
Depending on your SO - you might not get that chance. It's not a problem I'm likely to get but I can just imagine the question 'why haven't you updated me as your girlfriend on facebook?'
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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)
I built a Facebook app that does this for personal use. It's broken now since they released API changes, but it's pretty easy to do. Maybe I should go back and fix it and open source it.
Not sure what Facebook's policies say about these sort of notifications though.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I bet they will provide you a private one if you've got enough venture capital behind you to cut the cheques... (I hear the Winklevoss twins are lawyering up again)
Pretty sure this idea that Facebook can "predict" when people will break up was based on research by Lee Byron and David McCandless of 10,000 Facebook status updates with the terms "break up" or "broken up", presented as a nice graph[1] as part of a TED talk[2].
"Zuckerberg sometimes amused himself by conducting experiments ... he studied who was looking which profiles, who your friends were friends with, and who was newly single, among other indicators..."
Okay seriously though I've never heard of arcade fire... they won a grammy? I'm confused. And thanks for that site because now I know I'm not alone.
I just pulled up their suburbs song on youtube and now I'm even more at a loss. It's a mad world out there, man.
I'm a big metalhead though. That's my excuse. It'd be cool if metal could win album of the year! ...for technical prowess. It's pretty hard to beat metal in that respect - but it does depend on the subgenre of metal. Jazz is the only other genre that comes close.
there is absolutely no reason for these comments to be downvoted as much as they are
buncha arcade fire defending hipsters here im guessing
and dont give me any of that bullshit about comments with no substance because these comments have more substance than many others ive seen that get upvoted
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.
"You agree to Creepyest Web Service Ever Pty Ltd sharing your social graph and stalkee selection with our business partners including but not limited to match.com, collegehumor.com, and the NSA"
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?
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."
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
124 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadThe 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.
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.
However, there's probably some worthwhile activity in monitoring wall posts from ex's in the period running up to the status change?
Humans are completely unpredictable mind... haha :)
I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp, would you mind if I sent you an email about how Appengine's email service is working out for you?
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.
Not saying it wouldn't be successful tho.
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.
Fucknemeses would also seem to be an appropriate use-case.
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1221
If you just leave it off, you can at least make a case out of principle for it.
Signed up.
I think it will be massively successful!
http://twitter.com/reboundfinder
The account got a mention on MSNBC; I have no idea why.
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)
Not sure what Facebook's policies say about these sort of notifications though.
Would work well with facial recognition on beauty.
Another idea: an unfriend notifier. (like with a twitter unfollow notifier)
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/58852
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.
[1] http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/2010/peak-break-up-tim...
[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLqjQ55tz-U (skip up to 6:30)
http://www.allfacebook.com/facebook-knows-that-your-relation...
"Zuckerberg sometimes amused himself by conducting experiments ... he studied who was looking which profiles, who your friends were friends with, and who was newly single, among other indicators..."
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.
http://whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com/
An amusing reaction to their winnings at the grammys
I just pulled up their suburbs song on youtube and now I'm even more at a loss. It's a mad world out there, man.
I'm a big metalhead though. That's my excuse. It'd be cool if metal could win album of the year! ...for technical prowess. It's pretty hard to beat metal in that respect - but it does depend on the subgenre of metal. Jazz is the only other genre that comes close.
buncha arcade fire defending hipsters here im guessing
and dont give me any of that bullshit about comments with no substance because these comments have more substance than many others ive seen that get upvoted
"You agree to Creepyest Web Service Ever Pty Ltd sharing your social graph and stalkee selection with our business partners including but not limited to match.com, collegehumor.com, and the NSA"
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.
"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."
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.
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.