While reading the zillionth or so person's observation the other day about how bad Facebook sucks, I find myself thinking the other day about how much I dislike having become basically a pawn of a few huge companies online. We all know how bad Facebook sucks. particularly in terms of their privacy policy and their complete lack of customer service. (Unless of course you are an advertiser-- a friend tells me that advertisers can get someone on the phone or to answer an e-mail; my friend explains to me that Facebook users are not Facebook's customers.) And the same of course is true of other huge online companies. Those of us who use g-mail are definitely Google users, rather than customers. This started off as a post about how frustrated I was at not being able to get into Google+.
You have to understand that for years my primary Google account has been based on a typo. Way back in the MUD days (if you don't know what that is, you are an online NEWCOMER who needs to remember her manners-- don't care how much Klout you have) I used the handle outofit. Out of it. That was how I often felt when I first began hanging out with some friends from Compu$erve on Timewarp (telnet: quark.gmi.edu:5150). To get to Timewarp I typed that string at ! Unix prompt. The Unix shell account I bought and accessed over dial-up from my local ISP was the only way for folks not connected to an .edu or a .gov to get online. So it was, very early in my blogging career when I set up a new Blogger account (long before gMail days btw) that I chose my old handle outofit. I'd used it for a number of years and had not yet conceived my libdrone handle that became the one I try to promote everywhere and always. Silly me. I typoed ouofoit into the account creation box and quite failed to notice the typo before I submitted it. For all of these years I have published multiple blogs while logged in as ouofoit@gmail.com, an address I never gave to any of my friends. And which I never connected to the web of a dozen or so e-mail addys I use, all of which forward into the one gMail box I actually use to manage all email correspondence drone@libdrone.info.
This last bit proved to be critical. I received dozens of invites to + from different friends at lots of e-mail addys. And every time I clicked to join in the fun, I got an error that + requires Profile and your organization is not allowed profiles. (gMail on my own domains, the free plan). I finally added a profile and displayed my real name with my very old typo ouofoit and after waiting about, voila, I am accessing the Plus and busy finding and adding all my Facebook friends. Time was I talked about how using different handle for different parts of your life enabled you to pursue even specialized interests with very different groups of friends, who have little in common with each other and whom you don't want to mix with each other. Google + with its circles feature seems prepared to enable you to finally do just that with your primary social media logins. How ironic that on Google + I am a 4 year old typo come to life.
