How Google+ Punk'd The Oatmeal

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday August 14, 2012 @10:33AM from the revenge-is-a-dish-best-served-in-vanity-URLs dept.

ryzvonusef tips this quote from TechCrunch about a tit-for-tat exchange between Google+ and the creator of The Oatmeal webcomic: "This summer, the artist (Matthew Inman) wrote that Google+ comment threads sound like *crickets*, poking fun at the social network's lack of engagement. He also criticized not being able to 'set up a fancy profile URL so I don't have to link people to http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie ' — a made-up, ridiculously long string of random characters. ... In retaliation, the Google+ team didn't cite its user growth stats or give an excuse for why there are no custom profile URLs. ... Instead, they just redirected the vanity URL back to The Oatmeal author Matthew Inman's Google+ profile. Congrats, Matt, you've now got 'donkey pie' at the end of your own special Google+ vanity URL."

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Re:Wow! That's almost hilarious! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-14 10:44 · Score: 0, Flamebait

It's the kind of childish joke I'd expect from an xkcd fan.
It's been a while since Google hired on merit rather than "fit". (And no, I've never failed a Google interview - I've never wanted to work there. But I have worked with some former Googlers and they lamented a change of culture since the IPO.)
Re:Wow! That's almost hilarious! by kiwimate · 2012-08-14 13:37 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Apparently this is considered very amusing and quite clever by the sort of people who run Google+ and the sort of people who hang out on Google+.
I see that as yet another extremely good reason for me to vehemently avoid Google+.