Author: Deano

This feature exists in a backhanded way:

If someone makes a friend request that you ignore, rather than reject, then that person becomes your "facebook follower" – able to see your activity, but without the ability to participate/respond to it directly.

In the context of facebook, it's extremely off-putting to be the ignored (I speak from personal experience), as it's an indication that someone actively shelved my request, rather than having the guts to cut me loose entirely.

Thus, my overall feeling is this: if Facebook implemented this feature, it would destroy Facebook. Having a lot of "viewers" who can't interact with you as a second base of people to manage subverts and overcomplicates the already-extremely-broken sharing and privacy tools of the site, and would ultimately either push people back towards "friend or not" decision making, or a muddle that resulted in less open and honest sharing, since it would be much harder to know "who is watching".

What would happen if Facebook let users "follow" other users in addition to the option to add as friends?

The value of a like is not a static number, it is in how you interact with the FB user post-like, and what you do with the information gained from the like action itself (as someone mentioned, "Liking" both exposes your page to the liker's social graph directly in-stream, but also allows you to target advertising directly at those who like you, and/or their friends. VERY powerful stuff.

I would say that the question muddies the answer – A facebook like does not necessarily affect the LTV of a customer directly – but calculating the LTV of the like itself is not only possible, but vitally important for anyone serious about engaging with their target market on Facebook.

What is a Facebook "Like" worth in terms of lifetime value (LTV) of a customer? What is the monetary value of a "Like", both in terms of customer acquisition costs and LTV?

Given the example, it may well depend on the description/vision of the startup… Here's what I initially thought, seeing each name:

upaper – what is it? also, seems to fade into the background… Maybe intentionally? Upside down, it's jededn, which might be Creole for "I turn people into zombies". Am I close?

Upaper – digital newspaper for Universities and colleges… Sort of a wordpress/Vignette for Academia? Alternately, a newspaper dedicated to the individual – YOU are the paper?

uPaper – the world's smallest paper products manufacturer, you enable nanobots to take notes when their extremely low power near field comm system is on the blink. Or something. Maybe you meant to be all Apple about it, and just misspelled iPaper?

None of the above is meant to mock, or deride any startup named "upaper", or any variation thereof. Just feedback on my initial impressions. 

Ultimately, the best spelling/capitalization will depend a lot on how you wish the name to be read… But take it from the founder of NaviDate – when you need to start doing fancy capitalization to get your name across, it might be worth taking the time to think of better names. 😉

Which is a better spell to write a startup name: upaper – Upaper – uPaper?

One of the most famous (and how topical with the new movie coming out) has to be the "Naked Smurfette" glitch from Smurf Rescue, which causes Smurfette to remove a significant portion of her outfit in certain circumstances.
(Photo courtesy of, and more details at http://bluebuddies.com/smurf_vid…)

What are the most famous video game glitches?

In iOS, the touch interface is meant to mimic real world touch responses.

For example: 

If you tear a page from a novel, put it on the table, then "flick up", the paper itself travels upwards, but if your relative eye position remains stationary, then the content focus "travels downwards" towards the bottom of the page.

Still not convinced? Take an iPad-shaped piece of cardboard with the "screen" cut out of the middle, hover it over the page, and use your finger to move the text up/down/left/right inside the 'screen area'. The movements will map directly to how a Kindle or iBooks page would on an iOS device. 
 
So, to me, I wouldn't say that the scrolling IS inverted, it's just "pretending" that the digital content within an iOS device is real, and that you are really touching that content. Therein lies the magic – Apple is optimizing for the technology to disappear into the background, and for non-technologists to have a lower bar to entry by making their real-world touch skills and experience as transferrable as possible.

Why is scrolling on iOS inverted?