Socially Mundane

Tateru Nino at “Dwell on it” blog:

You see most of the folks over on Facebook have already dropped their pants. They’ve exposed themselves. That exposure has led to all sorts of trouble, from harassment to identity-fraud. Nevertheless, most of the folks over there have gotten locked in to a whole life online without pants.

Now along comes Google Plus/Google Profiles and wants to eat Facebook’s lunch, so to speak.

Perhaps.

I believe it is a massive combination of all of the above (what Tateru writes about). “Pants-down” scenario along with advertising demographics (no, Tateru, I’m not the one who started that rumor) and many other things, including peer-pressures.

As for the advertising aspect: not because the advertisers want to know who you are, but they want to know you are a vetted “entity”. It gives validation to their advertising and advertising is Google’s bread-and-butter. It’s no secret.

As for the “pant’s down” thing… that’s a hard one to put a finger on. Certainly Tateru’s presumable theories are definitely viable and plausible, the “pants-down” idea is a pretty complicated one.

I am personally of the belief that Google wants to be able to say “hey, these are the real deal”; which is a good statement to throw around when selling advertisers, new comers to the social Internet, existing users of other social platforms and all the rest.

It is relatively agreed (right or wrong) that FaceBook’s massive “popularity” isn’t as much of a “popularity” as it is a “mass-effect”. They might have a quad-zillion “users’, but that could be a misnomer; what they have is a quad-zillion registrants. As for actual users who actually use the platform, I suspect the number is considerably less. How many times have you heard someone say “I hate FaceBook”?

This is what Google is going for: they are throwing the “don’t be evil” moniker all over the place, playing on FaceBook user fatigue over the privacy issues. But what all these users who make the switch aren’t realizing is Google’s privacy “features” are no different, other than instead of spewing “private” information out to the public, Google will simply keep all that to themselves: tracking you like hound dog for everywhere you go and everything you do.

Remember, as with FaceBook, you, the Google+ user are the product Google sells to their customers. Vetted products are higher-quality and always go for a higher price.

Just my too sense, your mileage will vary.