9 ms·

Moves joins Facebook

86 points by Aaronneyer 12y ago

beaker52 12y ago
Last week: Dropbox This week: Moves Next week: Gmail... oh wait. sigh
- FlacidPhil 12y ago
  Nobody bought Dropbox.. In fact Dropbox purchased Loom last week. I haven't seen news about Facebook buying anyone since Oculus.
  - dan1234 12y ago
    They haven't been acquired but I think quite a few people were upset at the news Dropbox had decided to appoint Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, to the company's board of directors.
    - bduerst 12y ago
      Which was more likely a PR stunt for an upcoming IPO, but I digress.
ohadron 12y ago
Seems like Facebook is completely unaware of how the public perceives their disrespect for user privacy. If I was a competitor the first thing I'd do right now is to make a way to migrate users' data from Moves to my app.
- loceng 12y ago
  Or they don't care, think they can get away with it.
  - ohadron 12y ago
    Probably so.
- dchuk 12y ago
  99.999% of Facebook's BILLION USERS don't have the slightest care in the world for privacy concerns on Facebook.
  - ff10 12y ago
    99.999% of 99.999% figures are pulled out of somebodies ass.
    - awj 12y ago
      Unless they start citing things, 99.999% of all figures are pulled out of somebodies ass.
- jordanb 12y ago
  I think Facebook knows how people perceive their product, and I think they also know the difference between expressed preference and revealed preference. http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-we-will-make-our-product-worse-you-will-b,33074/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-we-will-make-our-p...
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Umm, no. You can download your data as zip file.
  - dan1234 12y ago
    There's an export button built into the app. You get a link to a zip file which has all your data in a range of formats (CSV, GPX, KML etc)
- smackfu 12y ago
  OTOH, Hacker News is not "the public." It seems to me like most regular users complaints about Facebook are related to too many sponsored posts, junk notifications from games, and missing updates they consider important but Facebook does not.
- lewisflude 12y ago
  I personally don't feel they disrespect privacy and furthermore I know there are others who feel similarly. It's usually those who are outraged (not always the minority) that are the loudest.
  - droopyEyelids 12y ago
    For the record, I think they take privacy seriously, however I think allowing an entity to build up that much information on you & your family is inherently risky behavior. History has shown that laws may target unpopular groups who have done nothing wrong, and well meaning governments can force well meaning companies to divulge information relevant to unjust laws.
    - ballpoint 12y ago
      It definitely seems a little naive to hand over the keys to your life's data without accepting that you're taking on a fairly large amount of risk with regards to privacy. Even if the party to which you're handing it over doesn't intentionally behave maliciously, you still have to trust that they share your exact opinion on what reasonable use of the data is.
- parasubvert 12y ago
  I think HNers seem to be completely unaware that most Facebook users really don't care about user privacy that much. These "oh crap I have to move my stuff, Facebook owns it" reactions baffle me. I can understand a desire for privacy, but using an online service by definition means you're at risk. Hosting your own services on your own computers and communicating with open distributed protocols would be the most private way to go, though the problem with that is there's basically no money in building a social media system that works that way, so many attempts (Atompub/Atom, XMPP) have mostly remained niches.
- bertil 12y ago
  They are aware that people complain (they complain to Facebook after-all) but they assume those are people that are exaggerating and won’t actually change their behaviour. By and large, that is also true. They have no metric to measure pent-up resentment, nor can their imagine a possible sanction, other than migration to a new service. Because that threat is likely, they try to purchase those when they appear. My take remains that public intervention should be considered. There is no legal framework for that for the moment — therefore Facebook lawyers don’t see the issue; if there were, their lobbyists would be all over it.
joshstrange 12y ago
>> For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook. I don't believe this for one second. Glad I have my Withings Pulse now so I can drop the Moves app.
- smackfu 12y ago
  Based on what?
rickyc091 12y ago
Loved the app, but I'm hitting the delete account button as we speak.
mewwts 12y ago
Aaaand I do not feel comfortable using Moves anymore.
emdowling 12y ago
The post talks about data not going anywhere. Will the app itself continue to be updated? I recently stopped wearing a fitbit in favor of just using Moves and couldn't be happier. I hope the app continues to live on.
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Are you on a 5S? How bad a beating does the battery take?
  - ahknight 12y ago
    Not bad at all. Just turn on the setting to "reduce battery usage" and it falls back (almost entirely) to using the M7 chip and reading cached data periodically.
    - happyscrappy 12y ago
      Thanks. I set "reduce battery usage" but my phone doesn't have the M7 so the battery hit is still pretty bad.
loceng 12y ago
What are the alternatives?
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  Humanco Inc's Human App https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/human-make-moving-fun-run/id692721875?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/human-make-moving-fun-run/id... http://form-d.findthebest.com/l/25508/Humanco-Inc http://form-d.findthebest.com/l/25508/Humanco-Inc http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=240385971 http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn... Unfortunately, Humanco requires you to set up an account and store your data on their servers. Moves was great because you could store it all locally. I think the best option is to stick with Moves, and never update it again.
- bioinformatics 12y ago
  I have used Rove (http://www.roveapp.com http://www.roveapp.com), but I preferred Moved after testing it. Now I will be back to Rove.
- adrow 12y ago
  Any decent Android alternatives? I only installed Moves this morning as well!
dspillett 12y ago
> "the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook" I very much doubt this will remain the case for long, otherwise why would they bother buying it?
- rickyc091 12y ago
  Perhaps they are just trying to leverage people's personal data. See social trends, etc.
  - droopyEyelids 12y ago
    Yeah, you brought up a good point. Does "no plans to commingle data with Facebook" mean "your Moves data won't show up on your wall" or does it mean "Facebook Inc will not use Moves data to build your dossier" ?
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      I think it just means "we haven't yet made the plan of how we will commingle the data with Facebook, the meeting for that is scheduled for next week; once we've made those plans and are ready to implement them, we'll announce it as a shiny new feature."
- ohadron 12y ago
  You are probably right, however other reasons for buying them might be acquiring talent, or having access to technology that is either patented / expensive to develop independently.
- uptown 12y ago
  Facebook is starting to unbundle their apps, so the standalone commitment may be true. Instagram has remained standalone. They're separating their messaging app into its own app.
  - dspillett 12y ago
droob 12y ago
BOOOOOooooooooo. I'm tired of this game of whack-a-mole I have to play on my home screen. If I've learned anything as a modern user it's not to let any app become a part of your routine. It's not worth the hassle when they cash out.
- Kiro 12y ago
  > For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook. What exactly is your problem?
  - Torn 12y ago
    'There are no plans' is PR speak for 'there are no current plans'. Facebook is a data company, I'm sure they'd LOVE an accurate source of where their users have been, how they're moving around, etc. And then to sell-on that data to third parties, offer targeted advertisements in real time.
    - tsunamifury 12y ago
      In sorry, but did you ever imagine this wasn't the future for moves anyhow? If you are given a free service you better expect targeted ads at some point.
      - pilif 12y ago
        Moves wasn't free.
        what_ever 12y ago
        Did they change the model recently? Or were they charging for their APIs? I don't remember they charging the users.
        pilif 12y ago
nhangen 12y ago
I didn't think anyone actually used this app. Anyone know how many active users they had? I tried to use it, but it killed my battery and couldn't catch things that my Nike Fuelband could, since I don't take my phone to the gym, to run, etc. Still, good on them for getting a piece of the pie. I fail to understand why companies keep acquiring mobile app businesses, but what do I know.
- samstave 12y ago
  Their announcement says 4 million downloads, so some fraction of that as daily actives.
- FlacidPhil 12y ago
  I used it for a few weeks until I had a good sense of my average daily activity. After that I turned it off due to the battery drain as well. It wasn't a horrendous drag on battery life, but enough that it wasn't worth using when daily stats didn't change much.
- dan1234 12y ago
  I used it every day for just over a year. It didn't seem to be to big a drain battery-wise (I charge my phone every day anyway, so it lasted "long enough"). It's a very nicely designed app in that it doesn't try to do too much and what it does do, it does well. I exported all my data and closed my account following this news as I feel I already give Facebook enough data by simply having a Facebook account. Thankfully the exported data is in multiple formats and looks to be very complete. Hopefully I'll be able to do something with it someday.
- dirtyaura 12y ago
  They had lots of active users, reported numbers are in the ballpark. Lots of users loved it, despite the battery problem. I use it. My main use case is not the steps/activity tracking, but the automatic daily log and especially location tracking. Once a month I combine Moves and git logs and they give very good visibility to my daily work behavior. I've even used them even to make accurate hour reporting for some customers. The battery consumption isn't a problem if I don't move around the city all day long, but if I do, I need a mobile battery charger. Having worked with similar apps before, I can guarantee that the battery problem is hard to solve well, I know that Moves team did the best they could and their solution is world class.
gbrhaz 12y ago
I stopped using Moves a while ago when I noticed it absolutely hammering my battery. It was unfortunate as I used it almost as a journal (easier to remember what I was doing on the day when all that data is available).
- Shank 12y ago
  The journal feature is the thing I missed the most when jumping back to Fitbit. It had an uncanny laser-like accuracy for figuring out to the minute duration for when I was at a location. I miss that data a lot.
brianbreslin 12y ago
what did Moves do? never heard of them before today.
- grahamel 12y ago
  It's a step counter, a bit like 'map my walk/run' which counts how many steps you walked in a day and mapped out a rough route you took
  - brianbreslin 12y ago
    is it like argus? https://www.azumio.com/argus https://www.azumio.com/argus
rismay 12y ago
Are there any open source alternatives? Is anyone interested in building one?
- lazerwalker 12y ago
  I've been toying around with throwing together an open-source clone for a while now. If you limit it to the 5S, the M7 abstracts away a lot of the hard problems you'd otherwise have to solve manually, and you can eliminate the server component by just having a flat-file Dropbox export (a la Nicholas Felton's Reporter app). Anyone interested in maybe jamming on something like this should definitely drop me a line.
  - rismay 12y ago
    I rushed to buy the 5S for the M7. I was disappointed with the results. If you look at the offering of M7 apps, they mainly deal with step counting. The actual activity recognition is dismal (stationary, walking, driving, etc.) I had a demo of this working the afternoon the 5S came out. To get really good activity segmentation you need to monitor the accelerometer, not the GPS. This boils down to a signal processing problem, which I have no experience in. Any volunteers to tackle that problem?
- ff10 12y ago
  Though not OS, Apple's Healthbook might help you out soon.
pilif 12y ago
What really annoys me about this: I don't get a warning when this is happening. I had an account with them and now Facebook owns that data with zero recourse for me. Sure - the moment I read this, I deleted my account and the app, but who's to say that the data is really gone now and hasn't been copied to Facebook before this? First they got all my WhatsApp messages and now my Moves data. No longer can I chose to not share data with Facebook when they can just come in and purchase it after-the-fact. This will certainly make me even more careful whom I'm willing to create an account with. Up until the WhatsApp and Moves deal, I had this rule that if I pay for it, it'll probably going to be independent because whoever's running it will be able to sustain it. But now that this is out of the window, what's left as an indicator? How can I use a service if I don't want the data I create/store there to end up at Facebook?
- JonFish85 12y ago
  Short answer: you probably can't. I'm sure there's something in the legalese in the Terms of Service about how they are able to sell the company. Technically Moves still owns the data, but they are now owned by Facebook, so I'm sure they reserved the right to sell their company. The only way I can think of is if you can find a service that has a legally-binding promise to notify you with ample time to terminate your account and remove your data before merging with another company. But I'd be shocked if many/any companies do this, because they'd be hamstringing their value.
  - bertil 12y ago
    Actually, there isn’t anything in that (kind of) contract other than the fact that the contract is with the company (Moves Oy, WhatApp Ltd.) If Facebook buys out that company, then the contract is the same, but with a subsidiary. Even promisses to destroy in the contract wouldn’t be enough — because the entity that would promise to delete your data wouldn’t exist as soon as there is a legally binding event. At the moment, the only thing protecting you from that are competition authorities. If you can file a request for consideration saying that this would harm their users overall (not just isolate case: Competition authorities deal with economic policy, not individual cases), then you might block the overall sale. As someone who’s digged for years into current principles, I can say taht we are not even remotely close to having proper understanding by the lawyers of what kind of harm is at stake, let alone measuring it; from there, wait ten years and a couple of controversial cases to make it into effective policy.
alexcason 12y ago
cmd+f journey Yes! "Thank you for supporting us on this journey, and we’re looking forward to our future at Facebook!"
- Aardshaark 12y ago
  http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/
adrianlmm 12y ago
Are you guys sure you hate Facebook for privacy reasons and not becuase it is Google's nemesis?, becuase when I see someone complaining for Facebook and is using an Android phone with a GMail account there is something wrong.
- mitchty 12y ago
  I hate Facebook for other reasons than Google. Farmville spam of yore comes to mind. Stupid permission changes constantly is another. I use iOS by the way. Still have a gmail account but that might not last long. Moving email is a bit harder than deleting an app off my home screen.
  - adrianlmm 12y ago
    Farmville spam depends of your contacts and you can stop get it them easily, farmville is dead anyway, the stupid permission changes also exist in Google, they have changed them as often as Facebook, so, you must hate Google as equal I suppose.
    - mitchty 12y ago
      To be honest I nuked Facebook at the height of farmville spam (I don't remember it being filterable at that time but could be wrong). Just couldn't care about Facebook anymore so deleted the account. So if its better now great, but I just have a finite amount of time in life to deal with computers and Facebook was becoming too big of a timesink. Theres a reason I'm looking to replace gmail after being a "beta" invitee from ages ago. But its a long term project as I have to migrate both to new email account and also update countless logins to use it. Pretty much on the back burner for the moment.
      - adrianlmm 12y ago
        If you don't care about Facebook anymore (for good or bad), why would you care then if they adquired Move? sounds illogical to me.
creativityhurts 12y ago
For those looking for a replacement, Pedometer++ is a pretty good alternative (I'm not related to it in any way) https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/pedometer++/id712286167?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/pedometer++/id712286167?mt=8
CanSpice 12y ago
For those of you who might be looking to move away from Moves, you could give Breeze a try. It's only available for the iPhone 5S (because of its M7 chip). It was announced last week by Runkeeper: http://blog.runkeeper.com/1547/runkeeper-debuts-new-iphone-app-for-passive-tracking-breeze/ http://blog.runkeeper.com/1547/runkeeper-debuts-new-iphone-a... I haven't tried it, but I already have a Runkeeper account and I think I'm going to give it a shot.
- euphemize 12y ago
  Breeze is not really a replacement. It's a simple step counter app, it does not differentiate from different activity types, and is much worse on battery than Moves.
incanus77 12y ago
Yep, I'm outta here. At least I can still export my data, unlike what happened / is happening with Gowalla: http://www.quora.com/Gowalla/Where-did-my-Gowalla-data-go http://www.quora.com/Gowalla/Where-did-my-Gowalla-data-go A few weeks back I started playing with Moves' new export and TileMill, with some cool results: https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454306725311442944 https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454306725311442944 https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454307378482016256 https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454307378482016256
ejain 12y ago
Too bad the terms of the deal aren't public, because that would tell us if this is just another talent acquisition, or if Facebook has an interest in the app (or data)... I've been using the Moves app to add important context to my "quantified self" data on zenobase.com. The Saga app is an alternative in case Moves languishes--at least until they get acquired by someone, too :-)
ulfw 12y ago
Why does everyone have to use PR-Speak these days. "joins Facebook". That sounds like they're happy buddies going together now as equals. Why not simply say "Moves was bought by Facebook". Nothing wrong with that?!
- forgottenpass 12y ago
  I think this is another example of a popular business practice a few commenters have been pointing out a lot recently: "ignoring the considerable power you wield over other people and expecting them to ignore it too." We saw it with that out of touch ceo [0], as well as both Theresa and Tom Preston-Werner. In other words, they're using PR-speak because they've started believing it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7639962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7639962
jkdearden 12y ago
I'm definitely a fan of the brief 'About Moves' section they have at the bottom of the page. Too often these acquisition posts offer no details about what the app/company actually does, with the main website either not accessible through any links on the page or just gone completely.
gtirloni 12y ago
"joins" is quite an interesting word to use for being acquired and answering to new bosses.
harmonicon 12y ago
I am very dismayed at news that Facebook acquired Moves. That's one less app I will be using on my phone. However I have to stop to think is this just a knee-jerk reaction? Most of my friends, when I talk to them about how much information is being collected by FB/GOOGLE, just do not care all that much. Responses range from "I got nothing to hide from anybody" to "I think targeted ad is just fine". At that point I don't know what to say. Since in my case I just have a visceral hate toward company who attempt to collect all data about myself. Is it actually that bad?
- bertil 12y ago
  Yes and no… But ‘no, it doesn’t matter’ isn’t the good option here. Thing of it as your credit rating (if you live in the US) or you ability to lie to your plumber and say “I’ll just ask another one” when you have a leak, water up the knees and he asks for a month’s salary to fix the issue. Information matters when it allows to measure you willingness to pay for something — it’s basic micro-economics. You can step in a wine merchant or your car dealer (both classic cases in the economic literature) or with either a t-shirt or a suit and tie; in either case, they’ll offer you all the same options, but unless the labels are true (they are not if they are too high and without dealer-negotiated rebate) the price will adapt and make sure you’ll pay as much as you can. So… what happens on-line? Well, with the traces of your Facebook and Google logs, airlines can tell if you are really willing to take that flight, and might rake up the prices accordingly. It can come in many ways, depending if they have LinkedIn information (and can tell if it is for business or not) and they are generally far from perfect, but… Imagine that at one point, people notice it can be cheaper when you use the Incognito mode. That would trigger a reaction: political ones (banning the practice, unlikely in the US; already done for some cases in the EU); one would be to only sell through a mobile application that have your Facebook ID (or your mobile phone, same thing) and don’t let you the option of hiding it. Very rapidly, anyone who refuses to be identified will be refused service — just like you can only pay using credit cards and letting FISA know you bough something big for many things today. Forced service, cash is King? No problem: just make it more expensive than most non-revealing option, like what happen now if you want to purchase a car sticker-price. You are perfectly welcome to say you have negotiation and don’t want to deal with the slimy sales tactic: they would be happy to oblige. But imagine that is not jus cars, but anything that is advertised on Facebook now: restaurants, transport, real-estate, games, electronic. Face value crazy high; “social price” lower, but never exactly the same. You might be fine not having the social value — but if a single entity controls enough information about how much enough people are willing to pay… we will all suffer, except the stock-holders of that application.
cheshire137 12y ago
I just exported my data via http://moves-app.com/export http://moves-app.com/export and deleted my account. Know of any alternatives for Android?
hackmeister 12y ago
Every breath you take Every move you make Every bond you break Every step you take I'll be watching you "Every breath you take" by Sting

86 points by Aaronneyer 12y ago

beaker52 12y ago

Last week: Dropbox This week: Moves Next week: Gmail... oh wait. sigh

FlacidPhil 12y ago
Nobody bought Dropbox.. In fact Dropbox purchased Loom last week. I haven't seen news about Facebook buying anyone since Oculus.
- dan1234 12y ago
  They haven't been acquired but I think quite a few people were upset at the news Dropbox had decided to appoint Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, to the company's board of directors.
  - bduerst 12y ago
    Which was more likely a PR stunt for an upcoming IPO, but I digress.

ohadron 12y ago

Seems like Facebook is completely unaware of how the public perceives their disrespect for user privacy. If I was a competitor the first thing I'd do right now is to make a way to migrate users' data from Moves to my app.

loceng 12y ago
Or they don't care, think they can get away with it.
- ohadron 12y ago
  Probably so.
dchuk 12y ago
99.999% of Facebook's BILLION USERS don't have the slightest care in the world for privacy concerns on Facebook.
- ff10 12y ago
  99.999% of 99.999% figures are pulled out of somebodies ass.
  - awj 12y ago
    Unless they start citing things, 99.999% of all figures are pulled out of somebodies ass.
jordanb 12y ago
I think Facebook knows how people perceive their product, and I think they also know the difference between expressed preference and revealed preference. http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-we-will-make-our-product-worse-you-will-b,33074/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-we-will-make-our-p...
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- happyscrappy 12y ago
  Umm, no. You can download your data as zip file.
- dan1234 12y ago
  There's an export button built into the app. You get a link to a zip file which has all your data in a range of formats (CSV, GPX, KML etc)
smackfu 12y ago
OTOH, Hacker News is not "the public." It seems to me like most regular users complaints about Facebook are related to too many sponsored posts, junk notifications from games, and missing updates they consider important but Facebook does not.
lewisflude 12y ago
I personally don't feel they disrespect privacy and furthermore I know there are others who feel similarly. It's usually those who are outraged (not always the minority) that are the loudest.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  For the record, I think they take privacy seriously, however I think allowing an entity to build up that much information on you & your family is inherently risky behavior. History has shown that laws may target unpopular groups who have done nothing wrong, and well meaning governments can force well meaning companies to divulge information relevant to unjust laws.
  - ballpoint 12y ago
    It definitely seems a little naive to hand over the keys to your life's data without accepting that you're taking on a fairly large amount of risk with regards to privacy. Even if the party to which you're handing it over doesn't intentionally behave maliciously, you still have to trust that they share your exact opinion on what reasonable use of the data is.
parasubvert 12y ago
I think HNers seem to be completely unaware that most Facebook users really don't care about user privacy that much. These "oh crap I have to move my stuff, Facebook owns it" reactions baffle me. I can understand a desire for privacy, but using an online service by definition means you're at risk. Hosting your own services on your own computers and communicating with open distributed protocols would be the most private way to go, though the problem with that is there's basically no money in building a social media system that works that way, so many attempts (Atompub/Atom, XMPP) have mostly remained niches.
bertil 12y ago
They are aware that people complain (they complain to Facebook after-all) but they assume those are people that are exaggerating and won’t actually change their behaviour. By and large, that is also true. They have no metric to measure pent-up resentment, nor can their imagine a possible sanction, other than migration to a new service. Because that threat is likely, they try to purchase those when they appear. My take remains that public intervention should be considered. There is no legal framework for that for the moment — therefore Facebook lawyers don’t see the issue; if there were, their lobbyists would be all over it.

joshstrange 12y ago

>> For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook. I don't believe this for one second. Glad I have my Withings Pulse now so I can drop the Moves app.

smackfu 12y ago
Based on what?

rickyc091 12y ago

Loved the app, but I'm hitting the delete account button as we speak.

mewwts 12y ago

Aaaand I do not feel comfortable using Moves anymore.

emdowling 12y ago

The post talks about data not going anywhere. Will the app itself continue to be updated? I recently stopped wearing a fitbit in favor of just using Moves and couldn't be happier. I hope the app continues to live on.

happyscrappy 12y ago
Are you on a 5S? How bad a beating does the battery take?
- ahknight 12y ago
  Not bad at all. Just turn on the setting to "reduce battery usage" and it falls back (almost entirely) to using the M7 chip and reading cached data periodically.
  - happyscrappy 12y ago
    Thanks. I set "reduce battery usage" but my phone doesn't have the M7 so the battery hit is still pretty bad.

loceng 12y ago

What are the alternatives?

droopyEyelids 12y ago
Humanco Inc's Human App https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/human-make-moving-fun-run/id692721875?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/human-make-moving-fun-run/id... http://form-d.findthebest.com/l/25508/Humanco-Inc http://form-d.findthebest.com/l/25508/Humanco-Inc http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=240385971 http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn... Unfortunately, Humanco requires you to set up an account and store your data on their servers. Moves was great because you could store it all locally. I think the best option is to stick with Moves, and never update it again.
bioinformatics 12y ago
I have used Rove (http://www.roveapp.com http://www.roveapp.com), but I preferred Moved after testing it. Now I will be back to Rove.
adrow 12y ago
Any decent Android alternatives? I only installed Moves this morning as well!

dspillett 12y ago

> "the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook" I very much doubt this will remain the case for long, otherwise why would they bother buying it?

rickyc091 12y ago
Perhaps they are just trying to leverage people's personal data. See social trends, etc.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  Yeah, you brought up a good point. Does "no plans to commingle data with Facebook" mean "your Moves data won't show up on your wall" or does it mean "Facebook Inc will not use Moves data to build your dossier" ?
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    I think it just means "we haven't yet made the plan of how we will commingle the data with Facebook, the meeting for that is scheduled for next week; once we've made those plans and are ready to implement them, we'll announce it as a shiny new feature."
ohadron 12y ago
You are probably right, however other reasons for buying them might be acquiring talent, or having access to technology that is either patented / expensive to develop independently.
uptown 12y ago
Facebook is starting to unbundle their apps, so the standalone commitment may be true. Instagram has remained standalone. They're separating their messaging app into its own app.
- dspillett 12y ago

droob 12y ago

BOOOOOooooooooo. I'm tired of this game of whack-a-mole I have to play on my home screen. If I've learned anything as a modern user it's not to let any app become a part of your routine. It's not worth the hassle when they cash out.

Kiro 12y ago
> For those of you that use the Moves app – the Moves experience will continue to operate as a standalone app, and there are no plans to change that or commingle data with Facebook. What exactly is your problem?
- Torn 12y ago
  'There are no plans' is PR speak for 'there are no current plans'. Facebook is a data company, I'm sure they'd LOVE an accurate source of where their users have been, how they're moving around, etc. And then to sell-on that data to third parties, offer targeted advertisements in real time.
  - tsunamifury 12y ago
    In sorry, but did you ever imagine this wasn't the future for moves anyhow? If you are given a free service you better expect targeted ads at some point.
    - pilif 12y ago
      Moves wasn't free.
      - what_ever 12y ago
        Did they change the model recently? Or were they charging for their APIs? I don't remember they charging the users.
        pilif 12y ago

nhangen 12y ago

I didn't think anyone actually used this app. Anyone know how many active users they had? I tried to use it, but it killed my battery and couldn't catch things that my Nike Fuelband could, since I don't take my phone to the gym, to run, etc. Still, good on them for getting a piece of the pie. I fail to understand why companies keep acquiring mobile app businesses, but what do I know.

samstave 12y ago
Their announcement says 4 million downloads, so some fraction of that as daily actives.
FlacidPhil 12y ago
I used it for a few weeks until I had a good sense of my average daily activity. After that I turned it off due to the battery drain as well. It wasn't a horrendous drag on battery life, but enough that it wasn't worth using when daily stats didn't change much.
dan1234 12y ago
I used it every day for just over a year. It didn't seem to be to big a drain battery-wise (I charge my phone every day anyway, so it lasted "long enough"). It's a very nicely designed app in that it doesn't try to do too much and what it does do, it does well. I exported all my data and closed my account following this news as I feel I already give Facebook enough data by simply having a Facebook account. Thankfully the exported data is in multiple formats and looks to be very complete. Hopefully I'll be able to do something with it someday.
dirtyaura 12y ago
They had lots of active users, reported numbers are in the ballpark. Lots of users loved it, despite the battery problem. I use it. My main use case is not the steps/activity tracking, but the automatic daily log and especially location tracking. Once a month I combine Moves and git logs and they give very good visibility to my daily work behavior. I've even used them even to make accurate hour reporting for some customers. The battery consumption isn't a problem if I don't move around the city all day long, but if I do, I need a mobile battery charger. Having worked with similar apps before, I can guarantee that the battery problem is hard to solve well, I know that Moves team did the best they could and their solution is world class.

gbrhaz 12y ago

I stopped using Moves a while ago when I noticed it absolutely hammering my battery. It was unfortunate as I used it almost as a journal (easier to remember what I was doing on the day when all that data is available).

Shank 12y ago
The journal feature is the thing I missed the most when jumping back to Fitbit. It had an uncanny laser-like accuracy for figuring out to the minute duration for when I was at a location. I miss that data a lot.

brianbreslin 12y ago

what did Moves do? never heard of them before today.

grahamel 12y ago
It's a step counter, a bit like 'map my walk/run' which counts how many steps you walked in a day and mapped out a rough route you took
- brianbreslin 12y ago
  is it like argus? https://www.azumio.com/argus https://www.azumio.com/argus

rismay 12y ago

Are there any open source alternatives? Is anyone interested in building one?

lazerwalker 12y ago
I've been toying around with throwing together an open-source clone for a while now. If you limit it to the 5S, the M7 abstracts away a lot of the hard problems you'd otherwise have to solve manually, and you can eliminate the server component by just having a flat-file Dropbox export (a la Nicholas Felton's Reporter app). Anyone interested in maybe jamming on something like this should definitely drop me a line.
- rismay 12y ago
  I rushed to buy the 5S for the M7. I was disappointed with the results. If you look at the offering of M7 apps, they mainly deal with step counting. The actual activity recognition is dismal (stationary, walking, driving, etc.) I had a demo of this working the afternoon the 5S came out. To get really good activity segmentation you need to monitor the accelerometer, not the GPS. This boils down to a signal processing problem, which I have no experience in. Any volunteers to tackle that problem?
ff10 12y ago
Though not OS, Apple's Healthbook might help you out soon.

pilif 12y ago

What really annoys me about this: I don't get a warning when this is happening. I had an account with them and now Facebook owns that data with zero recourse for me. Sure - the moment I read this, I deleted my account and the app, but who's to say that the data is really gone now and hasn't been copied to Facebook before this? First they got all my WhatsApp messages and now my Moves data. No longer can I chose to not share data with Facebook when they can just come in and purchase it after-the-fact. This will certainly make me even more careful whom I'm willing to create an account with. Up until the WhatsApp and Moves deal, I had this rule that if I pay for it, it'll probably going to be independent because whoever's running it will be able to sustain it. But now that this is out of the window, what's left as an indicator? How can I use a service if I don't want the data I create/store there to end up at Facebook?

JonFish85 12y ago
Short answer: you probably can't. I'm sure there's something in the legalese in the Terms of Service about how they are able to sell the company. Technically Moves still owns the data, but they are now owned by Facebook, so I'm sure they reserved the right to sell their company. The only way I can think of is if you can find a service that has a legally-binding promise to notify you with ample time to terminate your account and remove your data before merging with another company. But I'd be shocked if many/any companies do this, because they'd be hamstringing their value.
- bertil 12y ago
  Actually, there isn’t anything in that (kind of) contract other than the fact that the contract is with the company (Moves Oy, WhatApp Ltd.) If Facebook buys out that company, then the contract is the same, but with a subsidiary. Even promisses to destroy in the contract wouldn’t be enough — because the entity that would promise to delete your data wouldn’t exist as soon as there is a legally binding event. At the moment, the only thing protecting you from that are competition authorities. If you can file a request for consideration saying that this would harm their users overall (not just isolate case: Competition authorities deal with economic policy, not individual cases), then you might block the overall sale. As someone who’s digged for years into current principles, I can say taht we are not even remotely close to having proper understanding by the lawyers of what kind of harm is at stake, let alone measuring it; from there, wait ten years and a couple of controversial cases to make it into effective policy.

alexcason 12y ago

cmd+f journey Yes! "Thank you for supporting us on this journey, and we’re looking forward to our future at Facebook!"

Aardshaark 12y ago
http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

adrianlmm 12y ago

Are you guys sure you hate Facebook for privacy reasons and not becuase it is Google's nemesis?, becuase when I see someone complaining for Facebook and is using an Android phone with a GMail account there is something wrong.

mitchty 12y ago
I hate Facebook for other reasons than Google. Farmville spam of yore comes to mind. Stupid permission changes constantly is another. I use iOS by the way. Still have a gmail account but that might not last long. Moving email is a bit harder than deleting an app off my home screen.
- adrianlmm 12y ago
  Farmville spam depends of your contacts and you can stop get it them easily, farmville is dead anyway, the stupid permission changes also exist in Google, they have changed them as often as Facebook, so, you must hate Google as equal I suppose.
  - mitchty 12y ago
    To be honest I nuked Facebook at the height of farmville spam (I don't remember it being filterable at that time but could be wrong). Just couldn't care about Facebook anymore so deleted the account. So if its better now great, but I just have a finite amount of time in life to deal with computers and Facebook was becoming too big of a timesink. Theres a reason I'm looking to replace gmail after being a "beta" invitee from ages ago. But its a long term project as I have to migrate both to new email account and also update countless logins to use it. Pretty much on the back burner for the moment.
    - adrianlmm 12y ago
      If you don't care about Facebook anymore (for good or bad), why would you care then if they adquired Move? sounds illogical to me.

creativityhurts 12y ago

For those looking for a replacement, Pedometer++ is a pretty good alternative (I'm not related to it in any way) https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/pedometer++/id712286167?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/pedometer++/id712286167?mt=8

CanSpice 12y ago

For those of you who might be looking to move away from Moves, you could give Breeze a try. It's only available for the iPhone 5S (because of its M7 chip). It was announced last week by Runkeeper: http://blog.runkeeper.com/1547/runkeeper-debuts-new-iphone-app-for-passive-tracking-breeze/ http://blog.runkeeper.com/1547/runkeeper-debuts-new-iphone-a... I haven't tried it, but I already have a Runkeeper account and I think I'm going to give it a shot.

euphemize 12y ago
Breeze is not really a replacement. It's a simple step counter app, it does not differentiate from different activity types, and is much worse on battery than Moves.

incanus77 12y ago

Yep, I'm outta here. At least I can still export my data, unlike what happened / is happening with Gowalla: http://www.quora.com/Gowalla/Where-did-my-Gowalla-data-go http://www.quora.com/Gowalla/Where-did-my-Gowalla-data-go A few weeks back I started playing with Moves' new export and TileMill, with some cool results: https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454306725311442944 https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454306725311442944 https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454307378482016256 https://twitter.com/incanus77/status/454307378482016256

ejain 12y ago

Too bad the terms of the deal aren't public, because that would tell us if this is just another talent acquisition, or if Facebook has an interest in the app (or data)... I've been using the Moves app to add important context to my "quantified self" data on zenobase.com. The Saga app is an alternative in case Moves languishes--at least until they get acquired by someone, too :-)

ulfw 12y ago

Why does everyone have to use PR-Speak these days. "joins Facebook". That sounds like they're happy buddies going together now as equals. Why not simply say "Moves was bought by Facebook". Nothing wrong with that?!

forgottenpass 12y ago
I think this is another example of a popular business practice a few commenters have been pointing out a lot recently: "ignoring the considerable power you wield over other people and expecting them to ignore it too." We saw it with that out of touch ceo [0], as well as both Theresa and Tom Preston-Werner. In other words, they're using PR-speak because they've started believing it. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7639962 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7639962

jkdearden 12y ago

I'm definitely a fan of the brief 'About Moves' section they have at the bottom of the page. Too often these acquisition posts offer no details about what the app/company actually does, with the main website either not accessible through any links on the page or just gone completely.

gtirloni 12y ago

"joins" is quite an interesting word to use for being acquired and answering to new bosses.

harmonicon 12y ago

I am very dismayed at news that Facebook acquired Moves. That's one less app I will be using on my phone. However I have to stop to think is this just a knee-jerk reaction? Most of my friends, when I talk to them about how much information is being collected by FB/GOOGLE, just do not care all that much. Responses range from "I got nothing to hide from anybody" to "I think targeted ad is just fine". At that point I don't know what to say. Since in my case I just have a visceral hate toward company who attempt to collect all data about myself. Is it actually that bad?

bertil 12y ago
Yes and no… But ‘no, it doesn’t matter’ isn’t the good option here. Thing of it as your credit rating (if you live in the US) or you ability to lie to your plumber and say “I’ll just ask another one” when you have a leak, water up the knees and he asks for a month’s salary to fix the issue. Information matters when it allows to measure you willingness to pay for something — it’s basic micro-economics. You can step in a wine merchant or your car dealer (both classic cases in the economic literature) or with either a t-shirt or a suit and tie; in either case, they’ll offer you all the same options, but unless the labels are true (they are not if they are too high and without dealer-negotiated rebate) the price will adapt and make sure you’ll pay as much as you can. So… what happens on-line? Well, with the traces of your Facebook and Google logs, airlines can tell if you are really willing to take that flight, and might rake up the prices accordingly. It can come in many ways, depending if they have LinkedIn information (and can tell if it is for business or not) and they are generally far from perfect, but… Imagine that at one point, people notice it can be cheaper when you use the Incognito mode. That would trigger a reaction: political ones (banning the practice, unlikely in the US; already done for some cases in the EU); one would be to only sell through a mobile application that have your Facebook ID (or your mobile phone, same thing) and don’t let you the option of hiding it. Very rapidly, anyone who refuses to be identified will be refused service — just like you can only pay using credit cards and letting FISA know you bough something big for many things today. Forced service, cash is King? No problem: just make it more expensive than most non-revealing option, like what happen now if you want to purchase a car sticker-price. You are perfectly welcome to say you have negotiation and don’t want to deal with the slimy sales tactic: they would be happy to oblige. But imagine that is not jus cars, but anything that is advertised on Facebook now: restaurants, transport, real-estate, games, electronic. Face value crazy high; “social price” lower, but never exactly the same. You might be fine not having the social value — but if a single entity controls enough information about how much enough people are willing to pay… we will all suffer, except the stock-holders of that application.

cheshire137 12y ago

I just exported my data via http://moves-app.com/export http://moves-app.com/export and deleted my account. Know of any alternatives for Android?

hackmeister 12y ago

Every breath you take Every move you make Every bond you break Every step you take I'll be watching you "Every breath you take" by Sting