Some people are getting a little uppity cause Google said "Hey guys can we all just put down our real names on Google Plus?" Yeah, I've got a pseudonym or two that I'm known to employ, so I completely understand the appeal of writing something up and sending it all over the world without feeling like some pissed-off ogre will come knocking at your door. That's the beauty of anonymous speech and I think it's an important part of the Internet and life in general. But I don't agree that anonymous interactions are appropriate in every possible corner of the Internet. Here's an article that seems to think it's being cheated out of something by Google's social networking reboot.
For the TL;DR crowd:
#1: I will be really mean to you because I know who you are.
#2: I won't say offensive things because I'm afraid of what you will think.
#3: I will find loopholes.
#4: I have confused privacy with anonymity.
#5: I noticed that other services are different.
I know, I know, I'm taking Google's side again. And mostly I don't care about the issue, but it does make it easier to figure out if I know someone or not (you ever try to look back through your mid-90's AIM contact list and remember who each SN is?) Maybe it's cause I'm almost 30 and I enjoy organizing my address book, but I like having a reliable list of contacts at my disposal with addresses and phone numbers, heck even job titles. It took me like 2 years to figure out that Jeff was "Clark Griswald" on FB for some reason. If you wanna share things publicly as karebear24 that's fine, there's still twitter and wordpress and digg but I see Google+ more as an auto-updated Rolodex contact card than a soapbox/megaphone for faux-lebrities trying to shoehorn more eyeballs onto their egos like most of these tech analysts want it to be. You don't like it, fine don't use it. Frankly I'll be perfectly happy if G+ never takes off enough that local news stations are begging me to Circle them on the Googles.
