Initially, I was excited about G+ as an alternative to Facebook, which I mostly boycott because of their horrid ToS and Privacy Policy. Â I was an early Twitter user (March 2007) and it’s still useful for broadcasting brief bulletins and updates, for asking questions of your network, etc., but there are times you want to write a little more than 140 characters or share a picture or video and you want it to be convenient for the reader to see your content.
fleep: Thinking twitter is a little creepy and perhaps addictive.. who are all these people and why do I care what they are doing? 09:54 PM March 11, 2007 from webÂ
When G+ rolled out, I thought YAY finally a useful alternative to Facebook! Â I happily circled all my friends and started meeting new people to circle and all was happy in G+ land – until I got suspended for not using my real name. Â Nevermind that I’ve been using Gmail for as long as it’s been around and have always had the same name on my account and the plethora of other Google services I use, and the most ironic of all – that I use Fleep Tuque on the net primarily because it’s unique and ranks higher on Google search!
Google search for “Fleep Tuque” are all hits about me, whereas
searching for “Chris Collins” brings up a zillion people who aren’t me.
I’ve written quite a bit on G+ about why pseudonymity should be allowed since my account was reinstated, but I’ve found myself hesitant to post on high profile threads or controversial threads in the worry that my account may be suspended or banned again, and that experience has made me re-think participation on networks where the value I create is primarily hosted on someone else’s site. Â Just like with Second Life, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of creating and sharing and chatting without thinking of the long term consequences of all your stuff being hosted on someone else’s service. Â When they decide to shut down the product or that they suddenly don’t like your name, then what?
My blog, on the other hand, has been around since 2005 – I discovered my first post when re-doing my theme this weekend – and I have backups of all its content. Â If Dreamhost goes out of business tomorrow, I’ve got all my content backed up in the cloud and on physical media. Â I’m not at the mercy of Google or anyone else to decide that after 6 years of using a service, my name is no longer valid, or the content I post doesn’t meet their standards.
So, for the next while, I think I’ll be creating all my content here and sharing links to it on other services instead of creating content elsewhere and hoping my name or content passes muster based on someone else’s criteria.
Maybe you should re-think your dusty blog too? Â 😉