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Comment by adamjernst | Hacker News Reader

Good for these guys for having hustle, working hard, and making a product people want.

Still, I can't help but think these "Facetab for Facebook" apps are kind of scammy; it's basically squatting on Facebook's name on the App Store. Try taking "Facebook" out of the app's title (leaving it in the description) and see how sales do. Overall, I'm conflicted.

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Thanks for your comment.

Actually, when the app was No.1 overall on the App Store, it was just called 'FaceTab' - as evident in the screenshots on the blog post itself. We only added 'for Facebook' to the name in version 2.0 in response to competition.

The app is basically a Facebook client, so I would not consider it scammy to put "for Facebook" into the name. Other apps are doing that as well, e.g. "Twitterrific for Twitter" [1].

There might be a trademark issue, but I didn't check the Facebook ToS.

[1] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/twitterrific-for-twitter/id35...

Since the only thing you see in search listings is the name, a descriptive title is extremely handy. The point is not to "squat" on Facebook's name (whatever that means), but to clarify for people searching "Facebook" that you are indeed relevant to that topic. It's similar to the reason why the built-in apps are named things like "Photos" and "Calculator" rather than "ZOMGVacationFun" and "CalculAWESOME" — the latter are significantly less meaningful at a glance.

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