Why Facebook gets away with demanding "Real Names" and Google doesn't

[andrewducker]

If I go to join Facebook then I know, at the moment that I sign up, that it requires my real name. And all that that affects is my Facebook account.

If I go to join Google+ then I am almost certainly doing so with an existing Google Account - and that account may well already be full of things that I do not want to be connected to my public identity.

The two use conditions may well have looked similar from inside Google, but they are most definitely being felt differently outside of the company.

And that's why Facebook gets very little in the way of complaining about their (nigh-identical) policy, and Google are taking a lot of flak over it.

I really do think that unless they back down on this it's going to be the death of the system.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Switching back and forth between accounts is a right pain though.

[steer.livejournal.com]

It's not that bad if you use the multiple account sign in thingy but it's not perfect. I do it all the time and use multiple google products regularly.

The one annoyance is that if one account is signed to a non-gmail account the gmail page won't switch accounts and sticks on the login page. Other than that it's a very minor annoyance.

[andrewducker]

It's still annoyance - and that problem is exactly the one I have, as my main account is on Google Apps.

I've solved it temporarily by having Google+ in Chrome.

But most people aren't going to be arsed switching back and forth between Google logins, they're just going to say "fuck it".

[steer.livejournal.com]

But most people aren't going to be arsed switching back and forth between Google logins

Most people are going to use their real name for all accounts anyway. However, most people with this problem I'd have thought would switch back and forth as, like I say, it's a really minor problem for most things. The problem will disappear more as google+ fades from use.