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Show HN: Does Facebook know your friends better than you do?

34 points| maxkiener | 11 years ago |youmewe.it | reply

47 comments

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[+] city41|11 years ago|reply
It's a really nice tech demo. I like the animations and it's well delivered. If you were to try and make it more of a "product" (ie more useful for the user and less about exploring the tech behind it), you might want to dig into more interesting facts. The months my friends were born in isn't very interesting. How many of them are married, what state/country they live in, etc would be more fun.
[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
I did get a little carried away by experimenting with vectors in a browser and js/jquery in general. Thanks for the feedback.
[+] rabc|11 years ago|reply
Cool animations and simple idea.

(Just a friendly reminder for everyone else: remember to delete the app from you Facebook. You can find it by the name you.me.we on Settings > App Settings)

[+] skwuent|11 years ago|reply
FYI with firefox + adblock + ghostery I see only the static landing page with broken "about" link.
[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
Thanks, i have only really tested with chrome , firefox and mobile safari all without special plugins (i didn't even know ghostery was until a minute ago)
[+] antihero|11 years ago|reply
Ghostery blocks Facebook stuff like Graph, which in this case is a useful feature.
[+] bnejad|11 years ago|reply
Perhaps try disabling some addons? I'm guessing its ghostery.
[+] ciupicri|11 years ago|reply
> you.me.we. will receive the following info: your public profile, friend list and birthday and your friends' birthdays.

Why would I give someone else's info to this application? I'm not even sure it's polite.

P.S. The issue here is not that I need to give some information about myself, I can perhaps deal with that, the issue is that I'm giving information about my friends. It make me feel a bit like a snitch :-)

[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
it is a questionaire about yourself and the app needs the data to create the questions. it is plain javascript with no backend attached to it. the data only gets sent back and forth between your browser and fb. none of your data ever gets stored on "my" server. hope this helps.
[+] Sharlin|11 years ago|reply
Hmm... I answered "younger" to the "Do you think your friends are on average older or younger?" question and it claimed the answer is wrong, giving the average of 29.24 years. I turned 30 in June.
[+] Sharlin|11 years ago|reply
Incidentally, I think the question would be better framed in terms of the median age - ie. "Do you think the majority of your friends are older or younger than you?"
[+] kevinwang|11 years ago|reply
Holy shit, you're definitely going to have to explain that graphic at the end. I looked at it for over a minute and I've absolutely no idea what it's supposed to represent or even what kind of chart it is or what the axes are.
[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
did you look at it on desktop? on the phone i chose abbreviations which fall short (no pun intended). the idividual letters are the months. the white curve is total friends' birthdays over months, red and blue curves are male and female birthdays per month respecively. the lavenderish curve compares the number of males and female friends. and the bottom (strong blue) curve compares your age to the age of your friends.
[+] mikegillman|11 years ago|reply
Yes, I'm sure a lot of work went into that graph, but it makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
[+] mouhtasi|11 years ago|reply
Nice message in the dev console :)

3/5. Fun idea and I liked the age data

[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
Thanks. I'm blushing, it's my first HN post (and first .js app)
[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
@cel1ne, you were a little too quick, i guess it hadn't fetched your data from fb. should work if you reload and give it a few seconds...let me know
[+] fakename|11 years ago|reply
I learned that no one tells facebook their real age. My "youngest" friend was a senior when I was a freshman.
[+] diasp|11 years ago|reply
Wrong. NaN% of your friends are male... NEXT
[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
If you reload and give it a few seconds it should be fine though.
[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
first thing i learned today: i should have built logic that prevents you from starting before all fb data is fetched.

HN users seem to be much faster than my siblings...

[+] asarazan|11 years ago|reply
I failed pretty hard. 1/5
[+] jx2zhou|11 years ago|reply
I don't have enough friends to even fail. 2/5 and then it alerted me I'd have to get more friends.
[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
did you like the idea and exectution itself though?
[+] Navarr|11 years ago|reply
More appropriate title: "Does Facebook know your friends better than you do?"

The answer: "Of course."

All of these are random facts about my friends I wouldn't bother to commit to memory. It doesn't say anything about me

[+] maxkiener|11 years ago|reply
My intent was that the results, albeit admittedly abstract, make you think about yourself. i believe who your friends are does say something about yourself (or at least provoke thoughts like: is it a coincidence that most of my friends are gemini?)
[+] dang|11 years ago|reply
That's a fair suggestion and we changed the title accordingly.