I played with the idea of creating some social aggregation type service with some friends (as a business). The more I read about FB's past behavior with regard to this, and how essential they are to any sort of service like, that, I canned the project. Regardless of what their TOS say, if you get on their radar and they send you a cease-and-desist, it's game over. Facebook is not in the business of subverting their revenue stream, so if you are making money off them and it's preventing them from capitalizing on their users, don't expect to last long if you exist by their grace.
Really, there's an interesting space between so small nobody cares and large enough that getting shut down is a real problem. A lot of projects start small and end up (relatively) large, but without a good way to pay for the service itself. While not every service needs to be a business and make money, once you reach the level where you risk either being shut out of your data source or you need to somehow work out an understanding with that source, how do you approach that when being able to pay is off the table? Not to mention the problem approaching before you have to and forcing the situation, or waiting too long and risking the wrath of the source because you've abused their service as long as you have. Has anyone else been in this situation and found an approach that works?
I played with the idea of creating some social aggregation type service with some friends (as a business). The more I read about FB's past behavior with regard to this, and how essential they are to any sort of service like, that, I canned the project. Regardless of what their TOS say, if you get on their radar and they send you a cease-and-desist, it's game over. Facebook is not in the business of subverting their revenue stream, so if you are making money off them and it's preventing them from capitalizing on their users, don't expect to last long if you exist by their grace.
Really, there's an interesting space between so small nobody cares and large enough that getting shut down is a real problem. A lot of projects start small and end up (relatively) large, but without a good way to pay for the service itself. While not every service needs to be a business and make money, once you reach the level where you risk either being shut out of your data source or you need to somehow work out an understanding with that source, how do you approach that when being able to pay is off the table? Not to mention the problem approaching before you have to and forcing the situation, or waiting too long and risking the wrath of the source because you've abused their service as long as you have. Has anyone else been in this situation and found an approach that works?