Facebook Breakup Notifier Takes the Fun Out of Friend-Stalking

Thanks to developer Dan Loewenherz, Facebook just got a little bit creepier—or more loving, depending on your point of view. That's all thanks to the new application Loewenherz recently released: Breakup Notifier.

So what, exactly, does Breakup Notifier do?

"You like someone. They're in a relationship. Be the first to know when they're out of it," reads the description posted to Breakup Notifier's main page.

As described, the exact particulars of how the service works are fairly simple. You just have to log into Breakup Notifier using your Facebook account, and then select the various people on your friends list whose relationships are of critical interest to your daily life. Should said relationships change—for better or for worse—you'll get an email referencing the friend and the specific change made.

"A few days ago, my fiancee and her mom were talking about setting up a nice guy with my fiancee's sister. Unfortunately, said guy is in a relationship. My mother-in-law to be suggested it would be nice to know when the relationship was over (jokingly)," said Loewenherz in a post to Hacker News.

"I blurted out that I could make something that could do that in a couple of hours. By then, I knew I had to do it."

According to Loewenherz, his application polls Facebook every 24 hours to detect relationship changes. Google's app engine powers the mailing portion of the application, while the rest of his relationship scanner is built using Django and the Facebook Graph API.

"Seriously, this is mostly a joke," writes Lowenherz. "But enjoy, if you do choose to use it for real."

It's been a relationship-filled week for Facebook itself, as the company announced last week that it had finished adding in the option for civil unions and domestic partnerships to its standard, "single," "married," and "it's complicated" relationship options, to name a few of the choices one can select for one's profile.

This article, written by David Murphy, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc..