[Terr_]

One factor that turned me away from Google+ when they were hyping it was their usage model. Having context-sensitive associations "circles" was nice, but they ruined it by not also having context-sensitive identity. Instead there was all that stuff about requiring real names everywhere.

In the real world we traditionally rely on other factors to keep out identities separate. A dirty joke told to some friends doesn't get archived and indexed and re-shared with metadata back to your boss. It gets forgotten or attributed to "a guy I know." So it's relatively safe to give your real name in both contexts, and maintain the separation between studious-worker in one context and bawdy-clown in another.

But online, maintaining that "freedom to be a different kind of person" isn't reliably safe when both things come from the same user-ID.