[ericras]

In all honesty I probably would have pursued the same real names policy if I had been running Google+. They were trying to avoid having it immediately devolve into the YouTube comments section - aka the scourge of the Internet.

I also think the real name policy is one of those things that we give too much weight too in analyzing the service. Lacking pseudonyms is not the reason "average" people have not used it.

[chime]

The alternative to real names is not necessarily Youtube or 4chan. Reddit, HN, Fark, Mefi, Slashdot, and tons of other lard communities work fine with just usernames. The alternative to real names is moderation, policies, flagging/reporting etc. Abuse is always a problem in large communities regardless of real name or username policy and many different solutions exist for each type of abuse. Forcing real name usage was never the solution to any form of abuse.

[ericras]

It is possible, I agree, but Reddit, HN and others have much more active moderation than Google was probably interested in creating.

[dredmorbius]

That's an entirely solvable problem, and numerous key G+ voices (Robert Scoble and Lauren Weinstein come particularly to mind) have long lambasted Google over the lack of suitable moderation and noise controls.

The effect at G+ was that there was a very narrow sweet spot for intelligent conversation -- you needed a large number (~1000 - 10,000 minimum) of followers to generate real traction, but past 100k, the ability to moderate threads was highly tedious. Lauren was (and is) heavy on the one tool he's got, the ban hammer, blocking people. The reasons often aren't that the individuals in question are doing anything particularly wrong, but that the dynamics given the other people likely to come to the thread will simply go haywire.

Or you end up with accounts such as The Economist whose posts are interesting but comments are invariably almost totally inane.

Google exhibited (and continue to exhibit) a profound lack of understanding of real community.

That carries over as well to G+ "Commnities" which are a complete fucking abortion.

[AllenKids]

Well,that's a problem for Google,not the users.

[Angostura]

The slashdot model is the one to look at then.

[superuser2]

Yes, but Google+ was supposed to be Facebook. Those communities are just that - online communities - not venues for real-world friends/acquaintances to interact.

[smackfu]

And in the end, it turns out that YouTube comments with real names are just as terrible.

[cookiecaper]

Totally agree that "real names" is a red herring. It irritated a small group of influential tech personalities, but as far as their influence may expand, it doesn't dictate which social network reigns supreme.

The reality is that once a service hits a certain critical mass it's almost impossible to extract. Facebook, like Windows, is now a permanent fixture in the tech community, and like Windows, it will only go away by slow, eventual deterioration made possible only by the gross incompetence of the company providing the software.

People don't care how much better your software is, the inertia will keep all but the most tech-savvy on the inferior solution as long as it provides basic semblances of expected functionality.

[Narretz]

> the YouTube comments section - aka the scourge of the Internet

Two things: As far as I know most people are fine with using their real name on Facebook, so real names on Google+ would not have been the big problem, it was real names on Youtube made a lot of people angry. Also, now that people can comment on Youtube with Google+, the quality of discussions hasn't improved, it's merely become different inane stuff like "Hey x, check this out" and other excerpts from chat-like conversations that have nothing to do with the video playing.

[daeken]

> I also think the real name policy is one of those things that we give too much weight too in analyzing the service. Lacking pseudonyms is not the reason "average" people have not used it.

I don't think that anyone will argue that pseudonyms are important to the average user. However, they are important to a small but influential group of users. The type of early adopter that otherwise could've driven G+ upward.

[npizzolato]

I'll concede they're a small but loud group of users. I'm not convinced the type of people who will refuse to use a service because of a lack of pseudonyms are necessarily influential.

I would attribute Google+'s failures much more to their abysmal launch strategy, which massively restricted otherwise-excited users from ever joining Google+ until it became a barren wasteland.

[mynewwork]

But, Google+ showed that they were incredibly influential. The real-name policy was the primary narrative about Google+. Feminist bloggers complained it would expose women to stalkers and abusive ex's. Journalists wrote about the underlying racism of the algorithm assuming Anglo-Saxon naming conventions and highlighted people barred from the service for having names from a different ethnic or cultural background. Techies wrote about privacy and big brother.

The end result was every article about Google+ carried with it some form of controversy, negativity or problem. Joe average might not care about the real name policy at first, but they do care when they're told it's broken, sexist, racist and dangerous.

[npizzolato]

Perhaps I'm misremembering how the Google+ story unfolded, but I wouldn't exactly call feminist bloggers the most influential. They're loud and often make PR waves (the dickwolves incident comes to mind), but I don't think that's what killed Google+ (PA is still going strong). If what the tech community thought was incredibly influential, no one would be using Facebook or Snapchat due to privacy concerns (comments that so-often get brought up on Hacker News).

I'm not saying the real name policy didn't hurt Google+. I'm sure it did, but I think it could have weathered that storm if it wasn't weak in much more important areas like their launch strategy.

[wtbob]

> I'm not convinced the type of people who will refuse to use a service because of a lack of pseudonyms are necessarily influential.

Or worth being influenced by…

[watwut]

Any time you use your real name, real HR or potential employer sees what you did. I do not want my chance to find work be influenced by random HRs opinions on what google play games I rated or which youtube videos I have in playlist. Nothing really controversial there, but people tend to be judgmental about details.

Forcing me to use real name means that I suddenly must be super careful about everything and control everything the same way as I control work. Not worth it.

[makomk]

Yeah, and Google+ launched at around the same time this issue was already getting quite a lot of negative attention, including in the mainstream press and media as I recall.

[hrktb]

I think pseudonym policy depend heavily on what we set as 'average'. My parents and their work relations use their real name everytime, for everything, I never saw them use a pseudonym and they scorn me for using silly or unscrutable names.

On the other end my siblings, cousins, school friends and some more all kept their AOL/hotmail/yahoo mail or other chat service nickname, which for a reason or another was a nickname.

I think it really depends on how, when and for what someone first came to the internet. If it was for fart jokes, or activism, real name policy is a bummer.