Google Profiles - Hardly A Facebook Killer Options

[bwelford]

Although others are pushing the notion that Google Profiles provides the basis for a social network structure that can kill Facebook, I find it will need a lot of work. Even the Google top guys are somewhat absent from the scene. You can read more on this in a blog post I just published.

A better approach involves Googling people with two keystrokes. This involves a new Firefox plug-in, Identify, which does a much better job of avoiding multiple profiles and providing a consolidated profile.

So which will you be working on: your Google profile or marking your hyperlinks rel="me". .. or do you want to avoid the glare of publicity?

[glyn]

Can't see any of this profile stuff taking off unless it has been issued by a local government, IE something akin to digital IDs. Would you trust any personal data to Google, or Facebook or MySpace? Look at Communication Privacy Management for how people are actually responding to the requests from Business to provide coherent and real profile information....they're faking it.

It's wild west for now, business takes what they can of people's indentities before legislation makes it illegal.

I'm just surprised it's gone on for so long....aren't you?

As for me, I'll just keep faking it.

G.

[bwelford]

Suddenly the old Sergey Brin Profile is blocked and they are suggesting you can delete your profile although the link does not work as it should. Clearly for Google, they have a little rapid work on their hands.

[cre8pc]

I wasn't aware of this. What IS the obsession by Google to know everything us anyway?

More seriously I believe Google profiles have some more major problems. Search for Matt Cutts and you will find there are two profiles for him. My friend Donna Fontenot also has two profiles although at least in that case they are the same. One problem here seems to be that there is no way of removing a profile as far as I can see. If you set up a separate Gmail account and mistakenly allow it to be treated as a profile, then that is one way you may end up with two profiles. The problem is one of Identity Consolidation. This is the ability for a user to indicate that one or more identities, profiles or URLs across different sites all represent that same user. It is also known as profile aggregation or profile equivalency.

I couldn't find anything on me. Which is just fine!

[iamlost]

Google has a personalisation identification problem. While a computer is logged (including cookies) into Google some reasonable cross-identifications can be made. However, there are a great many John Smiths and most do not always operate through Google accounts. By helpfully 'allowing' each John Smith to identify his web ocurrences...

Or... the algo is dumb, Google is cheap, and participants are foolish.