I’m not going to throw a hissy-fit over every social application that doesn’t cater to my perceived personal needs, but as someone who is well-known on the Internet by my pseudonym, I have no use for Google+ and its “circles” unless I can be raganwald to some people and Reg Braithwaite to others. Or until they drag me into it my getting practically everyone I know to use it instead of Facebook.
Nothing with real consequences at stake relies on a name, real or otherwise. We rely on social security numbers and credit card numbers in the US. Drivers license numbers. Telephone numbers. Account numbers.
No organization that really cares who you are gives a flying eff about your name, they rely on the relevant number, because names are not unique. Names do not identify, they merely suggest.
It's so bizarre. Even if Google's motivation is to uniquely identify you to advertisers, they already have that information (your unique Google account ID) and yet cannot guarantee that unique you is the same John Smith as other John Smiths in the advertising universe.
They seem to be getting nothing from this, nothing but lost good will.
I am as unhappy about this development as anyone. I don't understand the insistence on real names, not just because I think it's wrong, but I just don't understand what the motivation is. What's the upside?
Here's the only thing I could come up with:
Community. This early in its life, they don't want Google+ to become a cesspool of fake/joke accounts, youtube comments, spam, and "brands." They want it to be a real place for real people to share about real things. They don't want it to become Myspace. [Edit: I think you can also see this emphasis on noise reduction in how Circles are set up and how game notifications aren't part of your stream unless you want them to be.]
But I hope the plans are bigger. I hope they're just going for a nice clean introduction for a large enough user base, while temporarily marginalizing edge cases in order to give the mainstream a pleasant initial experience, so they can leverage that user base into a more successful version of what they tried with Buzz and Wave: an open, standards-based interoperable social networking environment that's more like the open web than a closed social network.[1]
The fact is, if they're planning on opening it up eventually, there's no stopping pseudonymous/anonymous activity or brands or even spam to some degree.
That's my optimistic fanboy take on it. I just don't see what else they get out of the policy. I definitely don't buy the "it's for advertising" line. They don't need your real name for that. And it just seems like too much of an obvious backlash and logistical mess to have to deal with unless they have a good, large, long-term reason.
I would argue that to develop many communities a degree of anonymity is required. An insistence of real names will mean a great many things will simply not be discussed or shared, whether it's because people are living under political or religious oppression or because it’s too dangerous or even embarrassing for them to do so without anonymity. Some of my friends fall into this category and discuss things online which they would not discuss in public because it would leave them open to discrimination, cost them jobs or make them targets of harassment. Offering people anonymity is nothing new- when interviewed by newspapers they have always been given the opportunity to use pseudonyms for example.
I'm not saying that Google is evil for having a real name policy or even that I want them to change it. They can do what they want - but my friends and I will never use their service as a result. I just want to point out that everything comes at a cost.
They have that right, no matter how much I may disagree. But everyone I was actually talking to has been suspended or left preemptively, the organization I work for got booted, my non-tech-savvy friends and family aren't budging from Facebook, and my circles are dead. I was really excited about Google+ when it launched, but from where I sit, they've done a much better job of discouraging people from using their service than of actually building it up.
From the company that advocated being able to re-invent your identity when you come of age. So obviously they recognize that there is a problem, they just don't know what to do about it.
Has anybody else been getting the feeling that the company vision has been very confused since they changed CEOs?
In following threads pointed to by the various +pseudonym threads, I've learned that many states allow common law naming, i.e. your name is what you say it is based merely on usage for N years.
It would be refreshing for Google to be as tolerant as government.
I read it the other way around, that it very much applies to them, and thus might make it less interesting for Mr David Howell Evans and others like him to join Google +.
And from reading the comments here, I think people don't realize that the reason Google is insisting on real names is so they can be a central identity management and login service which Facebook is trying to do now.
That's why I never stopped having my own site, and posting EVERYTHING (even photos, bookmarks, likes, check-ins) there, and using scripts I made to propagate the info on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
It's the only way to be safe against any company shutting you down.
