Google+ wants to ban nicknames

A month after its launch, Google + wipes his first controversy. Internet users are denied entry to this social network on the grounds that they were part under a pseudonym. Some of them have suffered in the wake of the outright suspension of their Google Account, thus depriving them of access to their Gmail or blogging service.

Among the "rejected", a blogger who does not reveal her name but signed with the pseudonym GrrlScientist. On his blog entitled "Punctuated Equilibrium", hosted on the website of the Guardian newspaper, he told his misadventure in a note posted Monday, July 25.

He explained that a week earlier, his Google account was entirely suspended, the system has "seen a violation." To re-access their Gmail email account, he was forced to give his home phone number to Google, which in return sent him a code lifting the ban.

Google + is hunting for nicknames

The search engine Google, which launched there about a month a social networking competitor Facebook, said Monday that its policy for managing aliases, prohibited by the terms and conditions of service. During the weekend, Google had removed a large number of accounts using aliases, their creators without warning, causing a wave of protests.

"We have noticed that many violations of rules on names + Google were honest mistakes, and our practices for those users could be frustrating and disappointing," said Bradley Horowitz, one of the project, its + Google Account. "We are putting in place a number of improvements to our procedures - particularly on how we warn users that their account is not in compliance with our policy." In the future, holders of an account under a pseudonym will be notified that their account will be deleted if they do not use their real name, and will not be deleted directly.

Another charge of Google, when asked by journalist Robert Scoble said that the choice of imposing the use of true identities was comparable to a way to establish an atmosphere suitable for the discussion and limit the impact of accounts used for spam or offensive behavior, "as a restaurant requires its customers to wear a shirt."

In three weeks, Google's social network has attracted about 20 million unique visitors, according to figures from the consulting firm Comscore. An impressive start, but still very far from the figures given by Facebook, which claims 750 million active users.