Show HN: We use Github Gists to store user data

Another company blog without a link to the company home page. I had to manually type your company URL to try to learn what this is all about. It is absurd how common this is.

BTW, your landing page at elastic.io could use some work. The slideshow runs much too fast (I had to hit the back button at least ten times to read it) and it didn't really explain the service you're providing (or explain why it's valuable, though I suppose "avoid billing surprises" is nice.)

It's a clever idea, to be sure.<p>I wonder if anyone at Elastic has talked with anyone at Github as, it seems to me, if Elastic gets any significant traction, this does nothing to help github (though perhaps I'm overlooking something) and leads into a 'Tragedy of the Commons' scenario wherein everyone is depleting a shared public resource for their own personal gain knowing full well that it isn't sustainable long term.

Wow, so they moved off requiring you have a Twitter account to requiring you have a Github account. Keeping in mind that requiring <i>any</i> 3rd party account to use your own service is a bad idea, this sounds even worse.<p>Have you ever tried to sign up for a Github account? Last I checked they made you perform a bunch of scary crypto stuff on your local machine before they'd let you in. I gave up at that step, as it would have required downloading and installing a bunch of random software to pull off. No idea why they would make people do that (and it's why I still don't have a github account), but...<p>To limit <i>your service</i> to only accept customers who have navigated that minefield? Sounds like the ultimate form of adding friction to your signup process.

It's a cool idea (storing user data in their own github accounts), but it sounds like a nightmare when it comes to security and data validation. No longer can you trust what gets into your database and instead you would constantly have to validate the data you import.<p>I suppose that makes the service more like an API where the service generates the code to run on it rather than the user.

Some feedback on your main site: Each slide has a lot of words, and I can't figure out how to pause it. I'm signing up for the beta because I _think_ I know what your site does, but I'm really not sure. I'd be more comfortable if I could see all 4-5 pictures at once, which could easily fit horizontally on my monitor.<p>Edit: OK, I was able to read all of the captions via "View Source"

<i>We don’t want to lock your data in our databases.</i><p>GREAT! Now get rid of the <i>silly</i> github requirement (and don't return to the even more silly twitter requirement) and give your users the <i>option</i> of storing it in github or retrieve their data some other way.<p>I can't even begin fathom the decision process that concluded in <i>requiring</i> github.

For specific audiences, using Gists as data storage is really useful. I did the same for my "reverse StackOverflow": <a href="http://askedtheinter.net/" rel="nofollow">http://askedtheinter.net/</a><p>Users own all their data, they can revise their answers, and other users can fork them; just like small Git repositories, and just the use-case that gists generally solve. Compare: <a href="http://timcameronryan.askedtheinter.net/q/1318314" rel="nofollow">http://timcameronryan.askedtheinter.net/q/1318314</a> with <a href="https://gist.github.com/1318314" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/1318314</a>

Reminds me a little bit of what unhosted (<a href="http://www.unhosted.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.unhosted.org/</a>) does