Let’s be real here: Google Plus asks for ID

Google Plus has just launched and already a Google crackdown. If you want to connect with Google Plus, the search giant declares it important that you use your common name.

Your common name is the name your friends, family or co-workers usually call you. For example, if your legal name is Charles Jones Jr. but you normally use Chuck Jones or Junior Jones, any of these would be acceptable.

Unable to complete the Google Plus sign-up flow, or your profile was suspended for a name-related issue? You’ve got some guideline reading to do.

We like Google Plus and its circles. The circles are closer to that way our actual social circles are made up compared to the free-for-all on Facebook. Fantasy footballers stay away from tech networks, and business networks are separate and distinguishable from church and school groups.

Besides Circles here are the other highlights if you haven’t sign up for the Beta of Google Plus yet:

• Sparks is Google Plus’ topic feed. You add topics that you’re interested in, and Google Plus will notify you when items about those topics arrive.
• Huddle: Huddle allowing you to talk with a circle all at once.
• Hangouts: A web-based group video chat which allows you to jump in and out of conversation events at will.

If your profile is suspended for not using a common name, you’ll be shut out of other Google services like Buzz, Reader and Picasa. Don’t like the name policy? Google suggests you make a copy of your Google+ data first and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. But we think it’s worth it for the clutter-free conversation.

Media ego monster

Old media silo.

As old media (newspapers) struggle to cooperate and share with entities (Craig’s List, Monster, Google, and their readers/viewers, etc.) that might slow down or stave off annihilation, a note on ego.

 

Cooperation is alien to the ego, except when there is a secondary motive. The ego doesn’t know that the more you include others, the more smoothly things flow and the more easily things come to you. When you give little or no help to others or put obstacles in their path, the universe – in the form of people and circumstances – gives little or no help to you because you have cut yourself off from the whole. The ego’s unconscious core feeling of “not enough” causes it to react to someone else’s success as if that success had taken something away from “me.” It doesn’t know that your resentment of another person’s success curtails your own chances of success. – Eckhart Tolle

 

Ego is on the clock. Changing patterns developed over decades is probably not going to happen . . . soon enough.