Slashdot Mirror
The Phantoms of Google+
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."
This will be HUGE! We all already knew that G+ was a ghost town. Suddenly, G+ will have TONS of active ghost members.
Didn't get enough people at the party? Code them into the system instead. Oh, and patent it.
Sounds like a grab to boost G+'s userbase beyond Wil Wheaton and Google engineers.
Not gonna touch Google+ until they get rid of their "real names" policy and I'm not inclined since I've invested so much of my online social life with Facebook.
Do you use your real name on Facebook? Seriously a lot of people complain about the "real name" policy even though they use it openly on Facebook. This may or may not be hypocritical, I suppose if you keep your porn collection on Picasa....
... has done just an excellent job in separating out, among all my friends and acquaintances, those who want me to spend my life looking at their photographs or mouse-clicking through Zynga games. And it largely segregates them.
Works for me.
I've been on G+ since it was incepted when the damn Meme about a real name started. Guess what. Google has never required a Real Name for it as long as you have a valid Log-In for their services. Those who only used GDocs/Gmail were fine. Even iGoogle (start page), Picasa or Google Groups worked if you had a log-in. The only service that has ever required a Real Name was Orkut due Brazil and the South American Problems. For EU/US/Asia, Orkut has been a non-starter as it's never been pushed for us to use it due to Picasa.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
You already are a data point. You've no idea how sophisticated the software that monitors what you do has gotten. I was recently involved in an integration with some of this sort of software on a site that gets a couple of million hits a day. It's amazing what they can do. If you go to a website, they will, regardless of your desires, browser settings, even proxies, know exactly what you do while there, and if you come back. They then share all this with other companies to build a profile of you. The simple fact that you say you don't want to be tracked ironically gives them an excuse to track you. They have to log your desire to not be tracked right? Then the store all your website activity by other methods, like IP Address, browser, OS, and a hundred other data points.... which builds a profile of you, without building a profile of you. They can claim this is just standard logging for security. Then, if you ever enter your email address or phone number on the site, they make the convenient assumption that you've changed your mind about your privacy. And here's the kicker, they don't just assume you've changed your mind going forward, they assume you've change your mind about the past to! So they drag up all your past traffic and attach it to your email address. Everything you do on the web is tracked and logged in excruciating detail by marketing departments all over the world. So far we're lucky that the government hasn't gotten access to this data yet, but it's only a matter of time.
And then you get angry at them when they provide you with a way to AVOID giving them information?
/me checks the date
Sunday April 01, @02:58AM
Yeah, it's already begun.
...
I am intentionally an inaccurate datapoint.
I know I can't control that a lot of information is being collected without my knowledge or consent.
So whenever I do get a choice, I'll provide information that is either inaccurate, ambiguous, or flat out contradictory to what is already known about me.
The more polluted their databases are, the less valuable it is to them, and thus the less influence they have over my life.
At least that's my hypothesis.
Sorry to tell you this - but it's not working, Mr. James Harrison of Baltimore, Maryland.
#DeleteChrome
How does wanting to have real and personal contact with people make them luddites? I didn't think forming and maintaining relationships was something that could become outdated.
People like you are sad and self-centred. The fact that you think you're so important that people are going to be left out validates that. If a friend can't take a couple minutes out of their oh so busy day to contact me personally, then they are no friend at all and I would rather be "left out" of their dealings.
This is the only redeeming value I place in social networks, their existence sometimes helps me to weed out the fake from the real. I haven't gotten to the point of outright rejecting people as friends because they want to use social networks but if someone ever pulled the crap you do, I remove them from my life.
Relationships aren't something that automatically last. They require nurturing and care. If you're too busy to take care of them, they wither and die.
As is par for slashdot, the summary contradicts the article -- "the invention is designed to convert anti-social-networking types to the joys of Google+" says the summary, whereas the patent abstract says "The ghost profile allows a user to use certain features in a social network without converting to a social network profile. "
In other words, the patent is for just the opposite of what the summary says it is for.
(Disclaimer: I work for Google. It's a big company; I had nothing to do with this patent.)