Opensource Obscure, Italian blogger, sometimes pain in the bum, sometimes extremely insightful, currently suspended from Google + for calling himself Opensource Obscure! So the question whether Google + would be pseudonym friendly and then by extension, Second Life friendly appears to have been answered on Opensource Obscure’s Flickr account. This is extremely disappointing.
I don’t have a Google + account, I don’t have a Google profile either, however Google have plenty of information on me, some of you may notice I have Google Adsense running here, to make that worthwhile I provide Google with my real information, it’s needed at that stage. This is how we normally act as humans, we part with information when we deem it necessary. One of my beefs with Facebook is that they try and push humans into acting in a manner that isn’t natural, I’ve mentioned this before but I know people down my local pub by their nickname only, I’ll buy them a pint, they’ll buy me one back, we don’t need to know each other’s full names, indeed if we did know them they wouldn’t sound right because we know each other by nicknames!
So enter Google +, with different values apparently, different groups of friends in different circles. However this still isn’t natural ordering or filtering, there’s generally crossover, but Google + has moved into the do not touch with a bargepole territory with their moves to suspend Opensource Obscure because it means that we can’t, as Second Life users, use our Second Life names, even though that’s how plenty of people know us!
That’s the point, Anshe Chung and Desmond Shang are well known in virtual world circles by their virtual world names, their real names wouldn’t ring anywhere near as much of a bell and this is the point all these social networks seem to miss. Their desire to tell us how we should present ourselves is extremely patronising. There are of course business reasons for not wanting us to present ourselves how we want, but I thought Google + might have been a tad more mature about this than Facebook have been.
Advertisers can still advertise to nom de plumes, when I login to Amazon they send me recomendations based on my previous purchases, they have my real details of course due to previous purchases but they only need an identifier to send me the recommendations and so do other advertisers. I don’t mind advertising, in fact I’m a big fan of advertising, but when advertising comes at the cost of trying to encourage people to reveal information to a wider audience that they should absolutely not need to reveal, then I take a step back.
Second Life users could be advertised to by people who run virtual worlds just because they are Second Life users, maybe companies who make computer games could target them, maybe other companies, but profiles of users should be the the driving force for advertising, not our real names because it’s our interests that advertisers should be interested in.
Tateru Nino has a really good post about names, or more to the point why official names aren’t always the way we are known, it’s something Facebook simply won’t accept (and one really needs to ask why) and it seems Google are confused over the idea, which is odd to say the least as GMail advertising was historically based on our conversations, not our names. Social networks will not win this battle, we will always draw ourselves into shells when we feel too much is being exposed and until a social network comes along that allows us to control whom we are, rather than the social network determining whom they want us to be, these conflicts will continue.
However all of this is best summed by an Oscar Wilde quote, because this is the very issue that social networks miss, but Second Life gets absolutely right (and long may Second Life keep getting it right):
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
Second Life should grasp this nettle, it’s a shame they didn’t develop Avatars United, but their new beta profiles have potential to provide social networking where we control whom we are in Second Life circles, Linden Lab really should take advantage of this.
The G+ thing may be a passing issue, as many commentators have noticed. It’s simply too soon to jump to conclusions until Google clarify their position.
Of course, if they are going the FB route, then it’s a pretty dim move – and begs the question as to what will happen with Google profiles (I have one as “Inara Pey”, for example).
The landscape around identity is changing – and FB and the like are completely wrong-footed on this. For many of us, virtual identities are not about “hiding” anything: they are about expressing another side of our personality. The fact that we can still use said virtual identities to carry out a whole range of functions – including responding to advertising and buying goods and services *should* be a reason for the likes of FB to be more embracing of the idea (and yes, I’m aware of the arguments as to why they don’t 🙂 ).
Well Google should have been able to wrong foot Facebook by taking a different approach here, even if it was one account multiple identities and therefore multiple circles within that account, there’s a lot of scope for recognising that pseudonyms aren’t anonymous trolls but identities in their own right.