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Punchfork shutdown inspires Open Recipes
- davidjhamp 13y agoI felt the same way when I first read about the acquisition/shutdown. Like the idea. As a replacement I found http://www.yummly.com/ http://www.yummly.com/ today.
- eah13 13y agoI 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.
- themgt 13y agoAny 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.
- eah13 13y agoAgreed. Like Diaspora for data? :)
- tlrobinson 13y agoIdea: 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.
- toomuchtodo 13y agoRunning as an extension has been done before (SEE: PACER Recap Extension: https://www.recapthelaw.org/ https://www.recapthelaw.org/)
- garry 13y agoThis 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.
- Terretta 13y agoRelated: Consider http://Pinboard.in http://Pinboard.in with the yearly plan offering Personal Archiving. Anything pinned (bookmarked) gets archived and you can view it from your personal archive.
- eah13 13y agoI dig it. Store this data in the cloud and call it ViewHaven. An automatic and complete record of everything you've seen on the web.
- IheartApplesDix 13y agoWhat 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 13y agoYeah, "a lot of work went into scraping those sites, so how dare you scrape mine!" Wat?
- defen 13y ago> 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.
- at-fates-hands 13y ago>>>>> 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?
- guelo 13y agoStartups 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.
- minimaxir 13y agoAlso, a startup may gate or otherwise limit user-contributed content (i.e. Quora). That has similar consequences.
- jonathanjaeger 13y agoNo. 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).
- arbuge 13y agoStartup 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.
- abdophoto 13y agoThat's a pretty ridiculous thing to say.
- nopassrecover 13y agoWhile 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.
- anonfunction 13y agoI 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 13y agoEnding 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 13y agoDon'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 13y agoHaha never knew about that one, easier to type on my phone.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoHmm, 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 13y agoI'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 13y agoI (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?
- davidradcliffe 13y ago
- hafabnew 13y agoLovely subtext in the last section. Good on you guys for not rising to Jeff's stubborn/dismissive attitude.
- oalders 13y ago> “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. :)
- morsch 13y agoHas anybody ever succeeded in applying the distributed development approach (forking, pull requests, multiple branches and variations) to recipes?
- rhizome 13y agoI 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.
- ortusdux 13y agohttp://forkthecookbook.com/ http://forkthecookbook.com/
- udit99 13y agohttp://www.forkingrecipes.com/ http://www.forkingrecipes.com/
- johnnyfever 13y agoon a related note, does anyone know whatever happened to foodieview.com? I lost a lot of recipe links when it unceremoniously disappeared.
- jedschmidt 13y agoAs 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.
- shiflett 13y agoWe're in #openrecipes on Freenode if anyone would like to join us.
- CurtMonash 13y agoOn 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.
- blantonl 13y agoSo 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 13y agoI 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.
- lessnonymous 13y agoYou 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/ 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.
- earbitscom 13y agoI 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.
- beseku 13y agoInteresting 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 13y agoMapalong 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 13y agoI'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 13y agoIt'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.
- akent 13y agoI'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 http://archive.org/details/archiveteam_punchfork