Facebook’s Camera app gets a new name: Camera•. Yes, “•” | Hacker News Reader

Facebook’s Camera app gets a new name: Camera•. Yes, “•”

thenextweb.com

61 pointsnextstep44 comments

I bet this is because of the App Store SEO. The way search works is that if a user types in "Camera" in the search field, the first apps that come up on top are the ones that are called simply "Camera[+non-letter-chars]". Even if Facebook's Camera had a gazillion downloads, it would end up below apps called "Camera+++", just because of the name.

By changing the name from "Facebook Camera" to "Camera•" the company is guaranteed to position on top of the search for the phrase "Camera", and get even more downloads. And once they changed it to "Camera•" in the App Store it only made sense to change the name to "Camera•" on the device, to maintain consistency in the naming.

(disclaimer: I'm the founder of AppCod.es, and we've analysed the details of Apple's search engine in detail :) )

That's quite interesting. Are there particular sorting rules for those non-letter characters? Why is + before •?

Each character has a numerical value that is fairly standardized as ASCII or Unicode. Typically + maps to 43, a to 97 (b to 98, c to 99, ...) and • to 149 and will be sorted in that order.

That's a bit of a simplification; often times more sophisticated orderings are used, especially with consideration to internationalization.

Yes but apple doesn't use that. See kolinko's comment.

For more information, the appropriate search term is "collation" -- ordering words and terms according to the rules of an alphabet, case sensitivity, accent sensitivity...

When you order by name it's what esrauch said.

As for the sorting in the App Store, Apple strips all the non-letter characters, and orders apps which match the search query according to their download numbers.

So, if "Camera+" had 100k downloads, and "Camera!" had 10k downloads, "Camera+" will be above "Camera!" in the App Store search. There are some more rules explained in this slideshare: http://slideshare.net/kolinko/app-store-seo-tutorial

I don't think your SEO theory is right, the screenshot shows it being sorted after Camera+, and the actual ascii value of • is in the extended (>127) portion so its likely to be sorted after almost any other permissible character.

The screenshot shows iPhone app search (apps in the phone, sorted alphabetically), not the app store search.

Having said that, I've just tested my theory, and it seems that they didn't change their App Store name: it's still "Facebook Camera", and it still shows below apps like "Camera-" which has just a handful of downloads.

Thanks for sharing that tidbit. I'm excited to wake up tomorrow to see that †‡‰∞$Competitor^♡❤♥ has blasted up the charts...

you mean, like this: http://imgur.com/rIYmO

?:)

Thank goodness for Apple's curation.

I've been complaining about this for forever.

Hopefully, guys from Chomp will get this fixed within a year.

Company name I think is weighted higher than title of the app. I remember for a while the top game in the free section was made by a company called "Top Free Angry Zombies" or something like that. That's when you know App Store discovery is broken.

I believe it's weighted just as high as the name & in-app purchase names, but still far higher than the keywords.

As for the company name, I believe you're talking about "Angry Zombie Kids Apps & Doodle Zombiez Birds Jump Gun Games" (true name).

Fortunately you can change company name only once, so this is limited. But still..

Thank you for citing your experience for credibility purposes. :)

Of course :)

It is not an App Store SEO trick. They only changed the name the app shows on the device. On the App Store it's still called Facebook Camera.

My guess is that Apple has asked them to change it as 'Camera' is what they call their camera app.

It certainly doesn't make any sense from a consistency standpoint, but then again, Facebook is one of the least consistent web apps I've used. Everything from their developer SDKs/APIs to their end user mobile apps are ever-changing and often times filled with bugs or "What were they thinking?!" behavior.

In terms of splitting functionality into separate iOS apps, I don't trust they'll be able to keep the UX consistent, either.

Here's what I get when doing a search for "camera" from the iPhone AppStore:

Camera+, Camera ∞, Socialcam Video Camera, Camera!!, Camera, Camera ®, "Camera,", Camera.., CamWow: Free photo ..., Camera-, Instagram, CamWow Retro, 8mm Vintage Camera, Facebook Camera, ...

Notice how far down Facebook Camera is currently on this list.

Edit: I realize that the screenshot on the website shows the search order among installed apps, but I think this may be relevant, too.

If you're going to allow dozens of Camera* names, why the heck don't you just allow them all to be called Camera and let people sort them out by publisher? It's not like you should be using the name as the GUID anyway, or like Camera is a reasonably defensible trademark for a camera program.

My guess is that Apple asked Facebook not to use the same name as the built in camera, and Facebook complied to avoid damaging their renewed relationship.

So what's the right way to pronounce this app? Camera dot? Camera period? Does that symbol have a funny name?

Camera Bullet, I think.

"point and shoot"?

A far better name. I hope Facebook use this - and fill your pockets with gold.

I was mainly focused on "shoot" being related to "bullet".

That symbol is a “bullet”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullet_%28typography%29. But I would just pronounce the name “camera dot”.

i think you're just supposed to pretend the dot isn't there, probably.

This has been driving me crazy a little. Is it Camera Dot? Camera Interpunct? Camera Bullet? Camera Middle Dot? Camera Diacritical Character?

But I think, maybe, just "Facebook Camera" is the name they'd choose.

Glad they changed the name, though...am assuming Apple made them change it (which makes "interpunct" kind of hilarious); was totally surprised that it made it through to begin with--an identical icon with a different background color & the same name, many users wouldn't know the difference...and "Camera Interpunct? Dot?" is way better than "Camera - I don't know what happened, but my camera is broken and it always goes to Facebook!"

Name spacing isn't that hard. Facebook should be able to call it Camera - and to differentiate it from another Camera app, call it Facebook Camera. Trying to trademark dictionary words is just silly.

I don't think the bullet is a diacritical mark for anything, though I could be wrong.

Let Victor Borge explain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bpIbdZhrzA

Reminds me also of "Real Men Don't Play GURPS":

    Mark Rein·Hagen, the designer of Storyteller, was once asked, "How do
    you pronounce the dot in your name?" He replied, "It's unpronounceable,
    and symbolises how meaningless are the labels that we attach to
    ourselves." One can tell immediately from this comment that Mark
    Rein·Hagen is a Quiche Eater. Real Men don't need the abstract concepts
    introduced by Quiche-Eating games--like characterisation, immersiveness
    or realism--to get their jobs done. They are perfectly happy with a
    sword, a spellbook, and a beer.

http://home.zipworld.com.au/~hong/dnd/realmen.htm

A few years ago, MySpace decided to get creative and re-branded to "My_". [1] And we all know what happened to My_.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/08/new-myspace-logo/

MySpace was already dead by then however.

I doubt you can call MySpace dead.

I bet camera+ just /loves/ this.

note: sarcasm applied.

Indeed, swapping + with • is a tad dirty, even if "camera" is the best way to describe it.

Yes, dirty is the appropriate word here. It has a rather unsavoury feeling about it.

Absurd. Why not "Camera!", or something that can actually be pronounced, and that, you know, makes -sense-?

That's even worse! How are you meant to say that without sounding fake-excited? There's a radio station around here called "PULSE!" that I have the same issue with. It's not even an exciting radio station.

Yahoo!

It's for app store optimization. They want to rank high for camera

Reply on news.ycombinator.com