Elsewhere in Social Media

[jesse_the_k]

There's been some loud stuff happening.

ThomasMonopoly put all his eggs in the Google basket. When Google arbitrarily suspended his account, he was screwed.

skud, a dynamo of open source goodness who worked at Google for a while, has just been suspended from her Google+ "field trial". Her crime? Having one name. As she explained in her customary clear, insightful and funny manner in the Geek Feminism Wiki, any entity demanding "real names" from its users is counterproductive.

I have a shining example of how Skud is successfully known by that one name. Two WisCons ago, Skud submitted a panel description. The program chair asked me, "This sounds like a cool idea, but I don't know the person who suggested it--proceeded to mispronounce the name that's on Skud's charge card. "Oh, don't worry, that's skud!" I replied, and all was well.

Which is why I am happy to say, along with hundreds of other people around the world: I Know Skud!

July 22, 2011 Jesse the K holds an "I know skud" button

Comments

[trouble]

Honestly, for a while I thought the person I knew by Skud's legal name, and Skud, were two different people because no one calls her that and I was very confused who this other person was emailing me.

[jesse_the_k]

Too true. She gave me an in-person lesson in pronouncing her charge-card first name, and "skud" is much easier.

[rainbow]

feh. i don't think i'll be getting any more active with g+ than i am now; i don't use any of their other g services except the search engine, nor plan to)

[jesse_the_k]

Sounds like smart plan to me; I'm going to emulate it.

[epershand]

A quick heads up on the ThomasMonopoly thing: that wasn't a names issue, and from the information that's available it looks like the Goog made a good call in that case. See: the google support thread, this Hacker News comment by Matt Cutts.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for the update! The #1 lesson I took from ThomasMonopoly was: don't put all those eggs in one basket! Google does its damnedest to make it easy to use all their services.