google +

[jumpy]

Google+ insisting on having your real name.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14312047

"By providing your common name, you will be assisting all people you know in finding and creating a connection with the right person online," a Google spokesman says.

Hmm.

Not particularly in favour of my real identity being readily available online to anyone who wants to know. (although perhaps I'm feeling secure in the fallacy that this is not already the case)

I'm not a 'social network user' as I'm in favour of my real life friends communicating in person, rather than from behind a computer screen - some of those who are into facebook etc have already lost touch a little as they now do all of their social communication via that stupid website.

In some ways I think social networks actually take some of the personal connections between friends and weaken them by divorcing the actual face to face communication in favour of something entirely more artificial, requiring less effort or thought. Not forgetting all of that farmville/mafia wars time wasting crap.

The quote above demonstrates the problem as I see it - anyone who I already know (or want to know), knows who and where I am, so why would they need to 'search' for me online when they already know me/my online alias?

The spokesman's rationale is spurious as far as I can see.
The arguments about pseudonyms encouraging trolling also fall flat - decent folk will generally behave so (with the occasional wiggle), whist ****s will always behave like ****s. This forum is a good demonstration of this principal - there's often a little friction but decent communities will remain so because that decency is essentially inherent in its user base.

I guess the exchange for using the social network service is trading away your identity/personal information for access to the site, instead of paying a traditional subscription; It's my understanding that sites like facebook and google+ make their money from advertising and advertisers paying for access to a pool of information containing the habits and interests of millions of users around the world which they can use to more accurately target their products to those who will be interested in using or buying them.

Now I appreciate the occasional advert for something I didn't know about that turns out to be of great interest to me, but these are like one in a million chances. Most of the time I already have an interest in something, meaning I've done the leg work of finding out about it and the things associated with it. To a large degree advertising is already too late to catch my interest in something 'new' because it's not new to me.

I cannot be the only person who looks at this the same way; surely advertisers are not relying on my 'one in a million' hit on target for their revenue? That would seem a little bit random despite scaling that up over tens of millions of users?