Join my networks

[muckefuck]

As mentioned earlier, even before this latest outage, I was already thinking about how to rationalise my social networking. Several of my friends have made the jump from Facebook/LJ to Google+ and I've been considering doing the same but I'm waiting to see what its staying power is. It comes tantalisingly close to being the Non-Sucky-Facebook that I say a prayer every night to the Internet Gods for, but where it falls down for me is (a) not incorporating threaded discussions (C'mon, this was state-of-the-art when I joined Usenet twenty years ago, what is wrong with today's youth that they don't grok the utility of it?) and (b) having the same heinous WE PWNZ U approach to content that keeps me from posting anything of real value on FB (such as the pics from my recent photoshoot).

Google also seem to be betting that consumers are looking for a One Site To Rule Them All approach to online socialising, identifying FB's bizarre concept of merging all your circles of acquaintances as the primary impediment to fulfilling this niche. I'm not so sure. I think a lot of people like having a presence on multiple sites because different forms of socialisation require different functionality. Even more important, though, is the appeal of having multiple identities you can keep separate.

Probably the most blatant example of this is hook-up sites. Not even sex workers like overlapping their sex life and their job. A lot of people (particularly in my demographic) want a place where they can post smutty pictures and flirt outrageously without everyone from their boss to their grandmother finding out about it. The Google+ solution seems to be to segregate them in separate "Circles". But I'm willing to bet that for a lot of people, this won't be enough. After all, you still have one G+ profile with varying degrees of access rather than a separate profile for each Circle, right? (I'm asking--I haven't read up that much on the site.)

Moreover, there's always the risk of posting something to the wrong Circle. This is something that many people (particularly those who don't consider themselves that e-savvy) nurse a serious enough fear of to maintain multiple e-mail accounts. If you never send personal e-mail from your work account, you'll never end up accidentally sending a too-personal one to everyone at work. How many people do you know bamboozled enough by the options on FB that they post to someone's Wall something intended to four eyes only?

Sure, it's a pain to have to deal with a half dozen accounts on as many sites, but, again, not as much of a pain as explaining those dick pics to a potential employer. So I wonder if the real killer app wouldn't be some sort of middlware: All your social networks brought together in one place, so you can quickly see new posts and toggle over to answer them. But each maintains its own look and feel, so you're not going to easily forget which is LinkedIn and which is SinDungeon. Now, if I'm thinking of this now, some geek already came up with it ten years ago. So what are the products? Has anyone seen something like this? Is it just Not Ready For Prime Time?

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

As far as I can tell, having multiple G+ profiles isn't currently supported. (In practice, it mostly means that a second profile has to use a name that's not "obviously" fake, since they don't have much in the way of verification. So "muckefuck" wouldn't work, but e.g., "Mark E. Frick" would probably be fine.)

The system is still in beta, and there's currently a fairly vocal push from a subset of the user community in defense of pseudonymity. (Including several of the reasons you give, and others.) How big I don't know-- I'm seeing a fair amount of back and forth, but I'm not exactly viewing a random cross-section of the service. If Google is persuaded (and that's a big if at this point), that's when I'd expect support for multiple profiles to be officially built in.

[danthered.livejournal.com]

a place where they can post smutty pictures and flirt outrageously without everyone from their boss to their grandmother finding out about it.

Well, Bruizr, and I assume there are analogous sites for communities other than ~bear.


The Google+ solution seems to be to segregate them in separate "Circles"

There's a "circle jerk" joke in here somewhere, I just can't quite find it.

I squandered years on Usenet (with PINE!). Its hierarchical, threaded structure really hasn't been bested, IMO.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

theoretically, you cannot post smut to G+

this is Google practically forcing the emergence of smut-friendly sites

perhaps they have their tentacles in that market segment, too?

[bunj.livejournal.com]

There was a nice article in Slate recently (http://www.slate.com/id/2298584/) about Ravelry. The author pointed out some of your quandary: That one-size-fits-all sites, even if they segment each community, don't necessarily have the best functionality for each of those communities. Ravelry is designed for knitters, and works well for that group, but the folks running it have ignored suggestions that they branch out into other communities. Partly that's because they have no time, but also because their approach wouldn't work well for other hobbies.

The article also talks about pseudonymity. You can have a pseudonym there, but most folks interact in enough real world ways that excess dickery will get them burned, so they stay pretty civil.

[itchwoot.livejournal.com]

For the time being, G+ is more of a sucky version of facebook in my opinion. Especially their photo albums are seriously lacking. So I can edit pictures by adding stupid filters, but I can't move a picture from one album to another? Lame. Hope they'll fix this one soon.