Wednesday, October 30, 2013

A Custom URL for Google+ Profiles #NowWhat? #TooManyThings

Today I received an email from Google offering me a custom URL for my Google+ profile. This is so that it "lets you easily point people to your profile (no more long URLs!)".

Image source: Wardell Design Blog.
The wonderful URL "reserved" for me is google.com/+EugeneOLoughlin. I tried to change it to have +eoloughlin at the end, but even though this is my Google user name I was told it had already been taken! 

Google+ hasn't really taken off for me yet, and Google seem to be determined to keep this up even after their "Buzz" debacle. I wish them well, but I'm not sure how a custom URL makes a difference (it's easy to shorten URLs these days with the likes of bit.ly). It's also so easy to find people's Google+ profile - a search would be quicker than trying to remember a URL.

I also note that for people with an apostrophe in their name (and I'm sure with other nationalities' symbols too) that it is not possible to have a URL with their full name.

Thanks Google, I have added this to my web page, it's now the 5th link after Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook, and YouTube. I have too many things!

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