This usage of the word "hacking" is obviously one I haven't heard before - you put a tracking pixel in your profile so you could log who viewed your auction. You probably got busted because you used getclicky. I put tracking on my auction profile, but it would be an elastic stretch for me to say "I hacked the auction" by monitoring the IP addresses viewing my profile.

But for the rest that you say, I agree, DeveloperAuction have an interesting premise, but you cannot draw any conclusions from any profile traffic you get.

I will add one more observation to the discussion, I found the entire DeveloperAuction process completely opaque and thoroughly mystifying. You touched on this in your write-up; What about avatar? What about headline? Does location matter? Who viewed the profile? What did they like or not? More feedback to the people being made offers would be immensely helpful.

I agree, the fakey profile on the front-page was annoying and could be construed misleading.

On the last day of the auction I appended this text to my profile:

Well, it has been an interesting two weeks. Not one single offer. Guess I am not what the start-ups signed up for DeveloperAuction's services are looking for. Can't be that many people around looking for a CTO.

I embedded some basic analytics in this profile, and set up a script to track the general location of the computer being used to view the profile and send an SMS to my phone each time someone viewed the profile, including their general location.

I wrote a script that would cross-reference AngelList's database of companies with the IP addresses used to view my profile. There were a few weird hits, people logging in from home and local coffee shops, but for the most part, I was able to nail down most of the companies that showed up to look. A couple of home addresses, including one of a VC who lives at a winery in Northern California. Very easy to track through LinkedIn and a quick Google search.

This profile was viewed a total of 51 times between 00:01 on 4/22 and 11:59PM on 5/3. The IP addresses (obscured to protect identity) that viewed the profile were:

199.87.84.X,03/May/2013
166.137.191.X,04/May/2013
174.76.140.X,22/Apr/2013
38.104.230.X,22/Apr/2013
199.21.85.X,22/Apr/2013
24.5.70.X,22/Apr/2013
199.47.77.X,22/Apr/2013
199.241.200.X,22/Apr/2013
206.214.33.X,22/Apr/2013
216.231.9.X,22/Apr/2013
216.55.3.X,22/Apr/2013
173.13.174.X,22/Apr/2013
96.229.22.X,22/Apr/2013
96.229.22.X,22/Apr/2013
216.231.9.X,22/Apr/2013
98.155.87.X,22/Apr/2013
99.89.1.X,23/Apr/2013
174.76.140.X,23/Apr/2013
152.179.69.X,23/Apr/2013
12.201.135.X,23/Apr/2013
50.1.62.X,23/Apr/2013
173.228.28.X,24/Apr/2013
50.193.52.X,24/Apr/2013
69.170.175.X,24/Apr/2013
199.47.72.X,24/Apr/2013
67.53.126.X,24/Apr/2013
74.62.176.X,24/Apr/2013
74.73.226.X,24/Apr/2013
64.88.170.X,25/Apr/2013
98.210.198.X,26/Apr/2013
208.90.212.X,26/Apr/2013
208.90.212.X,26/Apr/2013
208.90.212.X,26/Apr/2013
208.90.212.X,26/Apr/2013
208.90.212.X,26/Apr/2013
208.90.212.X,26/Apr/2013
50.1.107.X,26/Apr/2013
24.7.16.X,27/Apr/2013
76.175.77.X,29/Apr/2013
76.110.232.X,29/Apr/2013
166.147.88.X,29/Apr/2013
67.52.152.X,29/Apr/2013
208.87.61.X,29/Apr/2013
209.119.30.X,29/Apr/2013
208.54.4.X,30/Apr/2013
216.55.31.X,30/Apr/2013
207.34.40.5,30/Apr/2013
198.228.216.X,30/Apr/2013
12.177.140.X,01/May/2013
173.247.201.X,01/May/2013
173.228.89.X,02/May/2013

I created a simple script that would grab the log files from my web server, locate the IP address of computers that viewed my profile -- because they would have downloaded an image when the user looked at the profile -- and then cross-referenced the ICBM address of the visiting IP with the ICBM addresses of each company in AngelList that was 1. Hiring for a technical position and 2. Had a listed address within 1,000 metres of the IP address and then plot a confidence factor on a Google Map view of which companies had come back to pay me a visit and upload the image to imgur so I could be alerted on my Android phone.

rem first we download the log files from my web server
wget --user=XXXX --password=XXXX -O access.log "ftp://otakunozoku.com/statistics/logs/access_log"
wget --user=XXXX --password=XXXX -O processed.log "ftp://otakunozoku.com/statistics/logs/access_log.processed"

rem process the log files, remove my two known ip addresses, split up the output in to ip address and date
rem should use "tee" here with process substitution but we cannot do that on bash in Windows, so instead, we use a temporary file
rem this is what we should use: grep -h -i "itunes_link" *.log | grep -v -E "98\.154\.169\.XXXX|71\.165\.193\.XXXX|70\.36\.57\.XXXX" | awk -v OFS="," "{print $1, substr($4,2,11), substr($4,5,3),substr($4,2,2)}" | tee >(gsort -t , -k 3,3 -k 4,4 hits.csv > date_order_hits.csv) >(gsort hits.csv > ip_order_hits.csv)
rem instead, we use these three lines:
grep -h -i "itunes_link" *.log | grep -v -E "98\.154\.169\.XXXX|71\.165\.XXXX\.131|70\.36\.57\.XXXX" | awk -v OFS="," "{print $1, substr($4,2,11), substr($4,5,3),substr($4,2,2)}" > hits.csv
gsort -t , -k 3,3 -k 4,4 hits.csv > date_order_hits.csv
gsort hits.csv > ip_order_hits.csv

rem geolocate all those ip addresses
del geolocate.xml
awk -F, "{print \"http://freegeoip.net/xml/\"$1}" ip_order_hits.csv | xargs curl $0 >> geolocate.xml

rem look up those geolocations on google maps and save the addresses
rem damnit, never could get sed to generate the proper formatting, just had to run it through gawk in the end
del addresses.txt
sed -r -n -e "/<Latitude>/ { N; s/<Latitude>//; s/<\/Latitude>/,/; s/<Longitude>//; s/<\/Longitude>//; s/\n//; s/ //g; p}" geolocate.xml | gawk -F, "{ print \"http://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/xml?latlng=\" $1 \",\" $2 \"^&sensor=false\"}" | xargs curl >> addresses.txt

rem go to angel list REST interface and pull in all companies
curl ... > all_startups.txt [what? you expect me to supply these commands so you can do the same?]

rem extract the company addresses and geolocate them
awk ... | xargs curl $0 > located_addresses.txt

rem filter companies that are within 1,000 metres of each IP address
rem get all of the jobs for each filtered company that matches an IP address
curl ... | sed ... | grep ... >

rem remove all companies that are not hiring for a technical position
awk ... | grep > hiring.txt

rem cross-reference the geolocation of each angel list company that is hiring for a technical position with each companies' IP geolocation data
rem plot the locations on a google map with the names of each company and a confidence percentage of who they might be, send the image to imgur
comb -i -v located_addresses.txt hiring.txt addresses.txt | r conf.r | googplot ... mapped.png | curl -k "mykey=[my imgur api key]&image=mapped.png" http://api.imgur.com/2/upload.xml

Some Of The Addresses That Visited

removed street numbers to protect privacy

Cottonwood Court, Hillsborough, CA 94010, USA
Skyfarm, Hillsborough, CA 94010, USA
Pierce Road, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
East Main Street, Grand Prairie, TX 75050, USA
South Santa Fe Avenue, Vista, CA 92084, USA
Northwest 120th Street, Potwin, KS 67123, USA
Stevens Creek Boulevard, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
De Anza & Stevens Creek, Cupertino, CA 95014, USA
Cowper Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA
Castro Street, Mountain View, CA 94040, USA
El Camino & Castro, Mountain View, CA 94040, USA
Old Mountain View, Mountain View, CA, USA
Nelson Rising Lane, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA
Mission Bay, San Francisco, CA, USA
South of Market, San Francisco, CA, USA
Anacapa Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, USA
3rd Avenue, New York, NY 10003, USA
Natoma Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, USA
Slater Avenue, Fountain Valley, CA 92708, USA
West 17th Street, New York, NY 10011, USA
West 1st Street, Los Angeles, CA 90012, USA
South Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

List Of Companies That Viewed My Profile? Yeah, let's keep that between me and the companies...