Category: Social Networking

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Do Google Get Social?

There have been accusations that Google don’t get social for quite a while now, with the advent of Google + it appears that maybe they do. However there’s evidence that they struggle with some aspects of social and this is exemplified via the recent TechCrunch interview with two of the guys behind Google +, which you can view on a post by Botgirl Questi.

One point where I get concerned is when one of the google guys talks about people not using video for contacting friends, it’s a pain in the arse is why people don’t do it, it’s not intuitive, it takes time to arrange, it takes more time to do and even though he touches upon these points, it’s his surprise that so many people don’t do it that’s concerning.

However Google + is about trying to find new and innovative ways for people to communicate in the real world by the sounds of it, Alexander Graham Bell isn’t going to be too concerned for quite a while I’d imagine.

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Google Plus In Land Of Confusion

The Google + issues rumble on for those with pseudonyms, there have been some interesting blog posts (and comments) from Prok, Marx Dudek and Hamlet Au. Marx Dudek’s post is interesting regarding verifying their account to google by using a mobile phone, when Marx hadn’t supplied them with a mobile phone number. I didn’t have to provide a mobile phone number when I signed up for Gmail either.

Prok and Hamlet both have links to a google plus discussion, with Prok linking to a post by Andrew Bunner, a google engineer, calling for people to report fake profiles. Whatever the intent of Andrew’s post was, the reality is that it will have meant people reporting avatar profiles, the intent may well have been to report business profiles, but that doesn’t seem to have been how the post was received.

Hamlet’s post links to the same post by Andrew Bunner but suggests he’s saying if your name doesn’t look fake, you’re hardly likely to be flagged. Andrew Bunner is an engineer, not a policy maker, so that may explain some of the confusion but the bigger confusion really comes from Google’s odd attitude. This really goes back to February when Alma Whitten, director of privacy posted a blog post under the title: The Freedom To Be Who You Want To Be …. this is where their stance on Google Plus and real names really gets confusing.

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Relay For Life in Second Life Smashes Previous Records

I’ll probably blog about the Google Plus nonsense later, but food for thought for those who feel you can’t social network without using real names, this year’s relay for life has so far raised 74,622,658 Linden dollars, that comes out at around USD$371,670, the figures aren’t finalised yet but you can follow them on the official relay for life in Second Life site.

This smashes last year’s total of USD$222,804 and also smashes the previous record total from 2009 of USD$274,000.  This brings the total amount of money raised for Relay For Life smashing through the One Million US Dollar mark since people started raising money for relay for life in Second Life back in 2004.

The figures from previous years and the history of relay for life in Second Life can be found on the wiki.

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Identity Not Labels

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.

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Google + Doesn’t Look Second Life Friendly

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!

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