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Scraping is a waste of resources for both parties involved. So is API polling to some extent. If we are going to move forward into the era of the Real-Time web,

Scraping is a waste of resources for both parties involved. So is API polling to some extent. If we are going to move forward into the era of the Real-Time web, we need to be setting examples of how different companies/sites can work together with event-based messaging/notifications. Twitter is great at this with their Streaming API. Facebook is trying, but their real-time API is a bit lacking at the moment. We're just trying to build something people want, and according to pg, he has received many requests for email notifications on HN, and we thought we could help in this area.

johnrob 16y ago
(edited for clarity) Maybe notifo could act as a clearing house for all HN events. This way anyone could access new post or new comment events. In other words, my application could use notifo to subscribe to ALL HN events. HN would of course have to ping notifo every time an event happens, instead of only pinging when someone replies to a HN user with a notifo account defined. Also, if I fill out my notifo box with my notifo name on my HN profile, HN sends a one time message saying "johnrob_notifo" wants to follow "reply-johnrob" events.
jsankey 16y ago
If we are going to move forward into the era of the Real-Time web, we need to be setting examples of how different companies/sites can work together with event-based messaging/notifications. I wouldn't call the current hook into HN a good example to set, though. It's a specific hack to allow notifo access, rather than a step towards generic collaboration. Note that I don't have a problem with it - it's pragmatic and useful. But I don't see it as a step forward.