The number of people who have had their accounts frozen is growing day by day and Google thinks it doesn't need to worry about it. However, suspending the odd avatar from VWs is one thing, but when you start on Press celebs ...watch out!
GrrlScientist has a major piece in the Guardian about how all her Google account has been suspended because of her name. Now, unlike me, the Guardian has readers in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, and the word is.... basically, if you thought G+ might be better than FB...forget it.
Now, I would think that any social media has, by necessity to be, potentially, global. G+ has turned itself into a selective minority group of people, which, as Tateru pointed out (re. Avatars United), just not good enough. She has written several good posts on the subject since.... but, the point I was interested in was that if you can't have all your friends using ONE social media it isn't gonna work. Now, assuming that at least some of your friends have 'Handles' or 'nyms, (not their wallet names) then you are basically stuffed if you thought G+ was the one for you.
G+ will, it seems, be the place for a small selection of middle class groups of people who think the rest of us are all weirdos.
Now, Bradley Horowitz, from Google did no favours to himself or his company in the stance he took in his recent reply...here... the only concession he made was that people will now be given some warning before they are kicked out.
His words..."we’re looking at ways to improve the signup process to reduce the likelihood that users get themselves into a state that will later result in review." sorry...but these people didn't get themselves into A State, you did.
He also claims that suspension from G+ will not result in the suspension of your other Google services... this is plainly untrue from what I have read. If you have a strange name, even if it's your RL name, you will be suspended... e.g. Crap who's RL name looks like two christian names..
It is now obvious that this policy is financially inspired, OK.... but blatant greed often kills off common sense, and Horowitz has lost his marbles here.
.... to start off a new product by alienating huge numbers of people and believe, as Horowitz does, that this is all healthy discussion is so mistaken as to be disasterous and why I believe G+ is DOA.
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They've certainly made a mess of things so far. I have a different take on large corporations than some of my more radical virtual friends. From my personal experience with many large organizations, I think that ineptitude, laziness and group-think is a much more likely cause of the policy, rather than some brilliantly devious ulterior motive.
ReplyDeleteG+ is DOA, and it's infecting the rest of google.com. Half the point of G+ is to manipulate search rankings with +1s; but we the suspended can't plus things up—it just won't take.
ReplyDeleteAs of now, I'm giving up on the whole matter. This is my last official word on this idiocy: http://gremlin.net/main/2011/07/26/the-facts
"G+ will, it seems, be the place for a small selection of middle class groups of people who think the rest of us are all weirdos"
ReplyDeleteExcellent! I wish them an very (un)happy DOA!
//Mera
@Botgirl, you are probably correct.
ReplyDelete@Gremlin, great post.
@ Mera....yep, good luck to them.
ReplyDeleteI agree: Google has screwed up the launch of yet another social platform. I had really hoped Google+ wouldn't be just another FaceBook without a care about online privacy. It has only been 24 hours, so I am still holding out a sliver of a thought that maybe I'll get unbanned, but at this rate, who really needs two FaceBooks?
ReplyDeletePerhaps G+ actually thinks they're somehow improving their product (we're the product, right?) And so close on the heels of the Facebook announcement of over 750,000 users.
ReplyDeleteI find the Facebook claim absolutely hillarious as I know many many friends and family on facebook that have multiple accounts so they can PLAY FARMVILLE and get more people on their vampire, or super hero or other teams for games. My dad, my mother, many of her friends, sisters, cousins. They DO this. They have fake accounts to play these mindless games and go up in levels. I find it a terrible waste of time, the mindless click click clicking just to get a virtual carrot for a virtual horse or some other nonsense.
I even personally know of people who use their dog or cat or children, even baby names as fake accounts for Farmville. If I know that many, I am sure that many others do too, and I think it would be really interesting to know the "true" user count on Facebook, though I am willing to bet even they don't know.
@ Conan, that is exactly the question...who needs 2 FB's.
ReplyDelete@Boudica....yes, thats like when we had bots in SL and LL claimed the 70k concurrent users.... it's all just smoke and mirrors.
"Get themselves into a state" pretty much says it all. We are RECALCITRANT and troublemakers; stupid and uninformed. We obviously can't be trusted to make a sandwich, let alone anything more complex. It's no wonder people don't like us.
ReplyDeleteGoogle is, of course, much wiser than us and that we don't understand how reasonable their request is to take off all our clothes and bend over for a jellied probe only indicates how lost and dumb we are. Thank god Google told me this or I'd be going through life assuming I was at least as intelligent as a dog!
And yes, @Gremil, this manipulation of +1 rankings is already a mushrooming business for the chinese ex-goldfarmers; use Google itself to find some companies that will guarantee you huge followings and blah blah by manipulating +1s for you...