The Phantoms of Google+ 214
theodp writes "Engadget reports that Google wants a patent on its System and Method for Generating a Ghost Profile for a Social Network. The brainchild of five Googlers, the invention is designed to convert anti-social-networking types to the joys of Google+ and its ilk. From the patent: 'A problem arises when users of social networks are friends with people that are opposed to social networks. The second group misses out on an important social component. For example, many users only share their photos on a social networking site. As a result, users that do not want to join the social network are forced to either join with reservations or miss out on the social component, such as viewing pictures.' By generating an unsearchable 'ghost profile' when a member of the social network invites a Google+ adverse friend to join, Google explains, non-believers get to participate in social networking activities without providing user information."
Re:Uh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Remind me again why I want to participate in social networking?
This is the biggest / most ridiculous case of "because it's there" in the history of our species.
Because you suck at talking with people in real life, which is why you're instead posting to strangers on the internet.
Re:Go to hell, Borg overlords (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:nope (Score:3, Interesting)
There are two possibilities:
(1) all your friends are Luddites, too.
(2) you are the person everyone complains about and has to spend extra time tracking down because you're the only one not using the new technology.
If you want to skip the whole FB/G+ thing, it's not a huge deal. But please, don't complain if you start getting left out of shit. I know some people like you and, quite honestly, I tend to simply not invite them to do meatspace stuff half the time. It's too much effort. Part of my being able to run a business, sit on two artistic boards of directors, one community service board, have time to play with my 9 year old, share stories with my relatives and friends on four continents is because I don't waste time on arranging stuff with every person individually. I know phone trees were all the rage in the 1960s (and, yes, the phone company is tracking who you contact, by the way), and chain letters may have been useful in the 19th century (still mostly untrackable if you use the USPS, though that's mostly due to gross incompetence).
I'm sure there are still lots of places where personal interaction for all of your interpersonal communications is manageable and commonplace. Just realize that if you have friends who are on social sites, they're probably leaving you out - intentionally or unintentionally - because if you're not on them you're simply not around for all of the conversations.
This G+ thing may be just a way to entice naysayers into the fold so they can rape their privacy for cold hard advertising cash. Or it may be a way to show the naysayers that there really are good things happening (i hopes that someday they can rape your privacy for cold hard advertising cash). It may just be a way to show FB users how much (they hope) they're missing by not being on G+.
Re:When will the Damn Real Name Meme Die? (Score:5, Interesting)
No they did not. What they did was revoke the requirement to share your real name with everybody else on google+. They still require it internally, they just let you use one or more fake names for interacting with other people. That's only a marginal improvement because the database is still just as much a risk to your security.
Re:nope (Score:5, Interesting)
I find social networking to be most useful not so much with friends (though it's great there, allowing me to stay in touch with many more people than I could without it), but with family. Perhaps you don't come from a large family, but I do, and my wife does, and our combined extended families exceed 200 people. We're only close to maybe 50 of them, but sufficiently close to all of them that keeping updated about important life events -- jobs, kids, illnesses, etc. -- is of great value to all of us. And with social networks we can have much more frequent interactions than that. I have cousins I wouldn't normally speak to for more than a few minutes per year at family reunions, but with Google+ I "talk" to them multiple times per week.
I also find it to be a great way to keep in touch with old acquaintances. Over the course of my 40+ years of life, I've accumulated a lot of friends who've since moved of my life, but I like them and am interested in what they're doing and thinking.
By lowering the effort required to connect and communicate, social networking applications make it feasible to be connected to more people -- and lots of people like that! You may prefer to have only a very small circle of very close friends and avoid others, but if so you're the exception, not the rule. I have a small number of friends that I talk to daily, one way or another. But I keep in touch with a much larger group of people, and social networks make it possible for me to keep in touch with even more.