The fuss about Google + and pseudonyms is based largely around issues of identity, rather than anonymity. There have been quite a few posts about this, Hamlet Au over at New World Notes makes the observation that Hamlet Au brings more results in Google search than James Wagner Au, I nearly always call him Hamlet, Hamlet is an identity.
Tateru Nino has a few posts on the subject, one of which discusses why it’s difficult to prove the name you go by on a daily basis. However this discussion in itself proves the folly of social networks encouraging people to social network with names that aren’t as widely known online as pseudonyms.
Google haven’t really given any convincing reasons as to why Google + is following Facebook down the anti pseudonym route and for Google, this is extremely disappointing considering how they tailor adverts to content, they absolutely do not need a database full of real names to make Google + work whereas Facebook came from a different angle and whereas I don’t see why today, they still insist on real names, it evolved from people knowing each other at University.
The issue Google and Facebook miss, and consistently miss in matters like this, is that a name is just a label, it’s the richness of your connections that grow your social network. The healthy way to grow your own social networking circles is by including people you get to know via communications of many different sorts, if you are looking up someone you went to school with twenty years ago, you should be asking yourself why you haven’t been in contact with them for twenty years.
I’ve seen the arguments against pseudonyms often, but if you don’t know the person who is posting comments in the first place, what difference does it matter to you if they are using a real name or a pseudonym? If you don’t recognise their name and feel pseudonyms are bad, what are they doing in your social networking circle?
Over the years people have used emails, IM, ICQ etc with the aid of pseudonyms, you tell someone else whom you want to contact, your email address or ICQ number or in the case of my friends at work, your World of Warcraft avatar names and you can work this way because, you know the bloody person whom you’re sharing this information with! World of Warcraft have of course moved to battle.net, which is based on real names and how it works is … you tell your friends your identifiable email address, but you don’t have to display your name to all and sundry for this to work, when Blizzard did try and move towards people displayng their real names to all and sundry via their forums, there was a backlash from users.
Google + and Facebook are of course perfectly entitled to set their own rules and policies, but their excuses for discouraging pseudonyms are complete and utter bunkum, if you know someone, you know them by whatever name they use and if you’re wary of revealing too much information to people whom you don’t know, pseudonyms are better ways of developing that sort of networking, you can always reveal more to people when you feel the time is right.
There’s a big gaping hole in the social networking market for someone to produce a social network whereby users control who sees what name, Google really should have been able to plug that gap and in the process, get one up on Facebook, but they have chosen to go down the road where Facebook is king, it’s a shame but they make their own decisions, I just wish they wouldn’t keep going with the crap excuses for going down this path.