Google just announced its answer to Facebook’s “Like” button: the “+1” button.
What will happen is that the “+1” will display on your search results as long as you are logged in to your Google account and have opted to participate in the Google +1 Experiment.
I’m not so “like”-ing it. While investigating, I found out that I had to publicize my private Google account. And that all private Google accounts would be deleted by 7/31/2011. 🙁
As a suspicious, neurotic female, I am loathe to publicize my location information. Call me crazy, but even frumpy old me has had my share of quasi-stalking incidents: old boyfriends looming from the past, penal residents. You get my drift.
(As a side note, as a new female lawyer, I got my share of handwritten appeals mailed to my home address from Texas prisoners begging me to represent them. I quickly learned to unlist myself. As a newbie attorney, tho, it was quite a shocker.)
But I needed to check out this whole +1 craze for my job. I’m diligent that way. So I go check out my profile to make sure everything is copasetic. That’s when I realize that Google is going to make me go public.
Google states, “If you currently have a private profile but you do not wish to make your profile public, you can delete your profile. Or, you can simply do nothing. All private profiles will be deleted after July 31, 2011.”
WHAT?!?
I gotta come out of my nice, cozy, private world in order to play with +1? Heck, even Facebook let’s me lock down my account.
So you know what I did, right? Fake data. I’m ageless, virtual and able to not just bilocate but multilocate.
Some tips to stay quasi-private:
  1. Don’t use your real name
  2. Use a generic phrase to describe your business rather than giving a business names or school names
  3. Limit who can see your e-mail, home and business addresses. I set mine to contacts and family.
  4. Don’t display the year of your birthday. You can limit display to only family and contacts.
  5. Don’t specify your gender.
  6. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, do not display your customized URL. It shows your e-mail address.
OMG. I like Google, in a generic, gotta-have-it kind of way. And I know their mission is “do good”. But just kinda have this itch in the back of my cranium that says in 100 years, Google is gonna be Hal.
You know, Hal for 2001 a Space Odyssey?
Ugh.