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How Google+ Punk'd The Oatmeal
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."
What does "punk'd" mean?
G+, a vastly superior platform.... ....except that there's nobody on it, which is what makes a social platform superior.
Unless your preferred social experience is finding new social groups, you're pretty much boned.
I participate in the Dragon Age Legends community when it was live, but when that closed, I wandered away...
It's the kind of childish joke I'd expect from an xkcd fan.
XKCD is about the least childish comic you can find, web or otherwise. Not sure where that came from..
It's been a while since Google hired on merit rather than "fit".
Did they stop the quest for people with PHD's or abnormally high grades? I hadn't heard that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You've pretty much proved the guy's point! All right!
On the plus side, by astroturfing this on Slashdot you'll almost certainly show a huge blip in traffic to that link - which you can turn around and use in your end-of-month report to show even more phenomenal Google+ growth!
Wait, that was probably your whole idea from the get-go, wasn't it?
#DeleteChrome
Basically, a webcomic called The Oatmeal made fun of G+, claiming that it was impossible to make short URLs on G+, and they cited the aforementioned http://plus.google.com/blergasdf1234thimbleturdorgasm99meatpoopypoopxv9donkeypie as a fictional example of this problem. Google, feeling particularly clever, decided to redirect the up-until-then fictional URL to point directly to The Oatmeal's G+ page.
This is allegedly humorous enough that it warranted being posted here. I beg to differ.
Occasionally, Google does something cool (like the speech-synthesis YouTube comment feature they added after and xkcd comic) but this just reeks of sour grapes from the Google plus team. It comes off as immature and petty.
You should beg for a sense of humor instead.
I beg to differ.
Permission granted. You may now differ.
Really sounds like a euphemism for something. I was extremely curious what it was a euphemism for (my guess was "puking"), so I had to click on this thread. I was then let down horribly.
Childish?
Childish would be receiving a lawsuit threat and settlement request for $20,000 from a lawyer, drawing a comic about said lawyers mother being humped by bears, then creating a charity drive called bears good, cancer bad to collect money for two very worthwhile charities. Then collecting nearly $200,000 in contributions for the charity drive, collecting the money as cash, arranging said cash into the words Fuck You, taking a picture of said arrangement and sending the photo to the lawyer.
That might be considered childish. The author of the Oatmeal comic did that.
Yeah, it's a real shame how Microsoft wiped those out and they disappeared.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I beg to differ.
Permission granted. You may now differ.
You saw a request and made it happen. If you worked for Google, we might be using G+ by now.
An imminently logical choice.
Is that a choice that's just about to become logical?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Any minute now...
I suppose that the original post should have included at least two things:
a) Apart from the harmless prank, Google is actually moving towards sane aliases for G+ profiles: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/13/google-plus-custom-url/
b) For the impatients, there is a sort of "url shortener" providing the service now: http://iplus.im/
Apologies if someone else mentioned this already and I missed it in the discussion.
So yeah, still waaaaaay more complicated than the same process on FaceBook.
Either you never tried it, didn't bother to read the link I posted, or you need someone to help you use a computer. Maybe your just an anonymous Facebook shill?
Google screwed up by linking these things together in the way they did.
No, you screwed things up by linking these things together the way you did. You used your Gmail e-mail address for your Google+ account. While you cannot change your Gmail username. You can certainly update the e-mail linked to your Google+ account.
To change notification settings and destinations:
1. Log into your account.
2. Go to your Google+ account settings.
3. Scroll to "Notification Delivery".
4. Click "Add e-mail address"
5. Enter new e-mail address and submit form.
6. Click verification link in your e-mail.
7. Return to your account settings and choose which e-mail you wish to use for notifications.
To add another e-mail to your account, which may be used to log in.
1. Go to your Google account settings
2. Scroll to "E-mail addresses and usernames"
3. Click "edit"
4. Click on "Add new alternate e-mail address".
5. Enter the e-mail address and submit.
6. Click verification link in your e-mail.
Your welcome.
Firefox and OpenOffice didn't exist in the '90s.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
So who lost on that deal, exactly? That wasn't childish, that was tactical.
Should I get myself checked out if I'm seeing certain words in that apparently random string of characters?