Tag Archives: google+

Drag Performance, Brand Pages and Personal Identities

October 10, 2014LGBT, Tech, To Exportfacebook, fb, g+, google plus, google+, lgbt, social networking, technologyHarry Underwood

The issue of the “Real Name” policy, whereby users are told to use “real” names (not necessarily actual names, but “real-sounding” names), is problematic for social networking services (SNS). It’s especially problematic when SNS operators refer users to use brand pages – profiles which are maintained and moderated corporately by one or more users for organized purposes such as promoting a brand or a movement – as alternatives to using pseudonyms on their personal profiles. The reason is that such a solution is half-baked on the sites which most emphasize the use of “real names” for users’ profiles, particularly Facebook (and formerly Google+).

Functionality issues

The suggestion by Facebook for preferably-pseudonymous users to use their pseudonyms on brand pages ignores the fact that pages on Facebook offer less interactivity than personal profiles. Facebook pages don’t allow pages – which are built to serve organizations rather than pseudonymous personalities – to form or join groups. In relation to this, Facebook also does not allow brand pages to automatically invite other users to events; compare this to Facebook groups, which allow for automatic invitations of all members to event pages.

Google+ Pages, in comparison, offer a bit more interaction, with the ability to create and join “communities” (equivalent to groups) as your brand page. In addition, G+ Pages can also add user profiles to circles (a more advanced version of Facebook’s “adding friends”) and invite followed profiles, circles of profiles and whole communities to events.

Presentation issues

However, in the case of pseudonymous users being “nudged” to create pages for their pseudonyms, G+ and Facebook both suffer from a high learning curve and a lack of tailoring toward personal identity pseudonyms.

Facebook’s “Create a Page” has six main options: “Local Business or Place”, “Company, Organization or Institution”, “Brand or Product”, “Artist, Band or Public Figure”, “Entertainment”, and “Cause or Community”. The closest to a means of controlling a personal pseudonymic identity is “Artist, Band or Public Figure”, which is limited alongside other Facebook pages in its interaction abilities.

By comparison/contrast, G+ only has “Storefront (Restaurant, Retail Store, hotel, etc.)”, “Service Area (Plumber, pizza delivery, taxi service, etc.)”, and “Brand (Product, sports team, music band, cause, etc.)”, which is even more confusing from the outset by the grouping of so many options into just three categories.

The ideal page

The ideal brand page system which would work perfectly for personal pseudonyms at the intimacy perhaps most desired by drag performers in an SNS, IMO, is a combination of Facebook’s presentation and G+’s functionality and interactivity:

Having at least 6 page-creation options including “Artist, Band or Public Figure”, or even a 7th “Character or Pseudonym” option.
Having the ability to follow/be followed by users and create/join groups “as” the brand page.
Have the option to switch to a preferred brand page identity upon login to one’s personal user identity.
Have the ability to restrict access to one’s personal profile while simultaneously operating a brand-page identity.

In such a system, performance artists such as drag performers would have the full ability to interact with their fans as their pseudonyms or public personas, to organize their fans into discussion groups (both public, private and secret) under their personas, and to easily invite fans to events (or even games and apps), all without revealing or exposing any of their personal profiles to the public.

When the brand pages are not fully baked, not fully conceptualized as alternative identities for both individuals and corporated groups, the ability to control your presence is hobbled. Performers like Sister Roma offer an opportunity for Facebook, G+ and the SNS sites of our era to not only listen more to their users, but to make their brand pages more useful for more people. The “Real Name” policy (as well as the restriction against multiple profiles on sites like LinkedIn) only hurts privacy, doesn’t help the quality of conversations on Facebook, and is not remedied by half-baked brand page tools.

Google Wave and the WikiNow

May 29, 2010Uncategorizedgoogle wave, google+, wikiHarry Underwood

Both Ward Cunningham’s C2 wiki (the first and oldest wiki) and Meatball Wiki have articles on the concept of the "WikiNow", in which the page databases of wikis are not only always up and available, but are also available to edit at any time by anyone, no matter how old a page may be.

Continue reading Google Wave and the WikiNow →

Image of the day: Google’s play-doh approach

June 19, 2009Uncategorizedchrome, google+, windowsHarry Underwood

Source: OneBlog

The Tabtitlebar – Where Apple and Google went right, wrong or M.I.A.

February 28, 2009Uncategorizedapple, chrome, google+, mac, opera, safari, user interface, web browser, windowsHarry Underwood

This will be short.

Already, skirmishes of opinion over Apple’s interpretation of Google Chrome‘s tabtitlebar – or the positioning of the tabs in the title bar of the browser in order to utilize screen space for webpages – have erupted on various news sites and blogs. Even on OS X, the jury over Safari 4‘s user interface design is divided; on the Windows port, most who express favor with Safari 4’s user interface design are usually users of Windows Vista, so the main supposition is that those who have the most trouble with the tabtitlebar are Windows XP users; oh, and (on a cross-platform basis) people who simply like more screen real estate for pageviewing.

Of course, Google Chrome Beta (Google’s first browser, and currently Windows-only) was the first notable web browser to publicly promote the UI infusion, and it was not without its initial criticisms for that same reason (among others, including the option of sending anonymous usage and crash data to Google). Safari 4 Beta, on the other hand, marks a first for Apple in its legendary user interface history, and may also begin a user interface trend for Apple throughout its Mac OS X applications (Finder, Mac OS’s file navigation app, is hinted to have tabs in early alphas of Snow Leopard, OS X’s 6th iteration, so it may well take up Safari 4’s tabtitlebar feature).

Many have written about problems with this emerging user interface widget, which utilizes the operating system’s window manager by embedding navigation between tabs within the title bar (mostly on Windows). Personally, I think it is a good idea due to a month or so of using Google Chrome (I also find the process-per-tab idea to be a good idea), but problems still linger with both implementations as far as I’m concerned.

Speed: Chrome is far better in the speed department than Safari as far as opening, closing and navigating between tabs is concerned (again, maybe because of the process-per-tab idea). The Windows port of Safari 4, like its Mac port, does not allow an option (AFAIK) for using middle-click to close tabs; left-clicking to close tabs in Safari 4 on WinXP feels like chipping into brick. The responsiveness to clicking buttons to close and open tabs is horrendous on this platform.
Tab navigation and perception: In this area, I’ll say that Firefox 2.0+, despite its own speed and resource management issues, did a better tour-de-force at tab navigation than Opera, Chrome or Safari, by allowing one to scroll through as many tabs as one may please without the tabs being scrunched up in the tab area. All the other browsers, even Chrome and Safari, continue to maintain the metaphor of the "limited tab area", with Safari 4 doing worse by maximizing the view of the tab of the current page in view at the expense of other tabs-in-waiting.

Yes, Firefox actually did something that I’ve come to appreciate (and wish that they could extend into a much wider territory of tab navigation; getting rid of the tab-specfic close button in 3.0 remains questionable, IMO).

There is room for improvement for Safari and Chrome in this combination of two user interface metaphors. In fact, there’s room for improvement for most of Apple’s software ports to Windows, but I highly doubt that Apple is willing to consider such ideas as unscrunching the tabtitlebar for tabscrolling or giving separate processes to each tab, just as how I doubt that Microsoft will do the same with IE8 or IE9.

CORRECTION: Google’s web-office

March 9, 2006Uncategorizedgoogle+, writelyHarry Underwood

THIS is Google’s upcoming WEB-BASED OFFICE

So say hello to Writely (beta).

It’s not taking any registrations until they get things settled, so hold your horses. But now we know that Google *is* launching a web-based office suite service.

So the rumours are indeed true!