How to List Your Avatar Name Next to Your Real Name on Google+ (Which I Generally Recommend)

While it's now possible to have an avatar-only Google+ account (if you can convince Google your avatar is known enough to deserve one), you can also just list your avatar name alongside your real one. In your G+ profile, just click Edit Profile, select your name, then “More options", like so:

You can list your nickname in many ways, one being the way I do so above. Unless you're planning to absolutely maintain a Google+ account that's only relevant to your avatar and those who only know your avatar, I'd personally recommend listing it as a nickname alongside your real name. Doing so will give your Google+ account more credibility to both non-SL users and SLers who don't know your avatar, and give you leverage beyond whatever happens with Second Life the commercial entity. That's especially important to professional content creators and artists. As Beverly "Bettina Tizzy" Millson explains, "With artists, your name is everything. A pseudonym isn't a bad deal in real life for them. But limiting your persona to a virtual name in a walled garden (especially one that isn't growing) that can only be shared via still photos or machinima... it's a trap."

Comments

[Ciaran Laval]

Avatars are strictly forbidden, even with the new changes. There's a bit of muddying of waters going on with Google's latest changes. They want the name to represent the real person behind it, they seem to be relenting to a degree on what name people actually use.

[Toady Nakamura]

And then there's people who aren't into the social media the way you exactly are Hamlet, and so might make totally different choices than you do.

I have a friend who every time someone tries to link Facebook to her SL identity, we get a LONG lecture on why she Absolutely Positively Will NOT do that - she has a real life stalker, she's had to move thousands of miles to get away from and SL is a refuge.

Just because Mr. Z. came up with the idea of "Everyone has to use their real name on the Internet" doesn't mean that everyone agrees with him. And Google+ or Google- or Buzz or whatever it's called this week, is now on trajectory to be "same as Facebook" and we all know how that works. Only one company ends up on top.

However, on the good side of all this, Facebook has now been top dog long enough to have hit their crest and some new startup that no one has ever heard of will soon be "the new Facebook." I doubt if that will be Google. They do search engine fabulous, the rest of their social services have been fail.

And, unlike folks who believe a constant cacaphony of "me, me, me" is the best background music for life, there are still some folks who prefer not to put out on a minute by minute basis, every random thought percolating through the brain cells.

As for me, having been invited to join FB in its early days when they had no name rules, and then kicked off rudely by FB for having an "unreal name," I'm going to wait for the dust to settle on any other service that wants to track my every move in exchange for advertising revenue.

BTW, my unreal name gets thousands of hits. My real name... pfft. Who needs another "Mary Smith" on Google+?

Have fun with Google+ but please don't get cranky if Everyone fails to Use the Service the exact same way you do.

And Hamlet, please stop saying that SL is dying or a dead end especially based on the word/s of people who have noisily quit. Their opinion is their opinion. Despite the best efforts of a chorus of nay-sayers many of whom have predicted the imminent demise of the platform since before I got my account, SL is still alive and well.

I see new players every day for whom SL is just as magical as it was for you when you started. All this doom and gloom is like listening to that old guy who said the world would end last April... no wait, November... no wait, December for sure... He looked really silly when the globe ignored his predictions and continued spinning merrily along.

Dude, I've been reading "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling," by Hamlet Au for five years now. And truth? The sky hasn't fallen yet.

If I believed what you wrote when I joined SL, I would have marched right back out the door and never done any of the marvelous things that make me who I am now.

How many others have you cut off before they could bloom with your authoritative words and fancy graphics? How many people haven't stayed in SL because of the things you write? Maybe it's not "the Lab" that's entirely the problem but the negative buzz in blogs like yours that claim to be authoritative.

Even when invited inworld to the SL Birthday, you got frustrated in first 60 seconds and left - as you wrote at the time. So how much of the New Art did you see in one minute? How much art would you see in a museum if you only got to the coat room?

You can't say nice stuff about artists if you don't go see their stuff... but you can sure say nasty things about SL when you haven't been inworld in ages, still have an out of date avatar, claim you can't find your AO and can't remember how to use Marketplace to get a free one.

Just because you're mad at the Lab, or yourself, or something - please stop taking it out on folks who are still having fun?

Instead of more nattering negativity, how about you challenge yourself to a Positive February where every article you write about SL would be nice, pleasant, and positive, about the good people who are doing creative things in a world you used to love?

[foneco zuzu]

No more Gooogle!
I received their change of policy and for Me is time to move.
I still have my Yahoo account since 1998 and My mail.com accounts so now i just need to find a good alternative search engine!

[foneco zuzu]

Toady Nakamura, your post resumes all!
My hat to you!

[Psion]

That was an awesome post, Toady!