The problem with Google’s movement towards becoming more of a social entity is that it lacks one cohesive place to tie everything together. YouTube has social elements, Picasa has social elements, even Google Maps has social elements, but Google lacks this singular area — like a Facebook profile page — where all of this information can reside and be easily seen. But actually, it has such an area, Google Profiles — but no one really seems to talk about it, because it hasn’t been terribly useful, and it’s hard to find. But Google is now making it quite a bit easier to find.
The service now has an option to use vanity URLs for your profile page, as the blog Digital Inspiration found. This means that rather than having a page located at http://www.google.com/s2/profiles/3223lkn23lkn or some nonsense, it now can reside at http://www.google.com/profiles/YOURGMAILNAME. If you have a Gmail or Picasa account, the URL will feature the user name you chose for those. Otherwise, you can pick a name as long as it’s not taken by another Gmail/Picasa account.
This vanity layer helps these profiles not only be more user-friendly for sharing, but it will undoubtedly help them show up more often in actual Google Searches. And the ability to search these profiles is clearly important to Google. Back in November of last year, it added search functionality to the Google Profiles area. Still, it seemed like few used it. A few weeks later it rolled out a few other improvements to Profiles, including the ability to pipe in picture feeds and have thumbnails show up. But still, the moves went largely unnoticed.
But Google is clearly trying to build these profiles up as an area you go to to find social information about someone. And it’s not just tied to Google products, as Flickr photos can be piped into these profiles, for example. Google looks to be essentially creating a de-facto social network profile page, without having an actual social network around it. Apparently, Google, and all its services, are the social network.
Vanity URLs came up recently when we reported that Facebook was finally getting serious about using them. Unfortunately, it is still only for its Pages area, where celebrities and other people of note can get them, but regular users are still stuck with the http://facebook.com/profile=02938042039840 nonsense.
Go claim your Google Profile vanity URL now here.
I really don’t think this is Google’s area but why not?
People like anonimity, so profile no. is better than id. Also people dont want to give out their mail id in public, let alone that it will call for automated spam.
Astonishingly, blogger missed the whole point, maybe even google. Google always fool in social arena, with its skewed philosophy that manifests in failed orkut.
i want /londonbanana! {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/mCglIMVo1U_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”i want /londonbanana! ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/UivAtjNy28″}}}
LondonBanana is pretty damn good.
Vanity URLs, and hence the Vanity Fair poster pic, eh!! LOL
that’s lame.
You are assuming in this article that some people do not have a GMail account, which is not the case. 9 out of 10 readers of TechCrunch have a GMail account which would mean that when we go to the profile area, that ‘vanity’ URL is not really a vanity. It’s just a profile link to your Google username.
IMHO, what makes a vanity URL truly vanity is what bit.ly, and tinyurl.com are offering; custom words.
I don’t have a gmail account thank you. I’ve had the same hotmail account since I was 15 and I still use it today.
I have a yahoo email that I go to every 6 months only to find its been deactivated so basically I don’t ever use it except to sign up for things I think might turn out to just be spam.
I don’t have a gmail account either. Man, I hate these Google fanbois. There is a whole internet outside of Google. What does it say about you if you slavishly just follow the crowd and assume everyone else does? Guess what – successful people don’t do this, they create their own unique craziness. By all means follow the herd, but don’t assume we’re all the same.
It’s a nice setup…but there are too many better alternatives that do the same thing.
Kind of bummed that I wasn’t able to choose a “vanity URL”, however I guess I could set up another google profile, then…gah nevermind.
Yeah that would be a huge pain just for that. It would certainly be nice for Google to open this up a bit. But people would spam it of course.
Yep. I wanted my name and it chose my email alias for me. What a crock…
Yeah I agree, that sucks. I really don’t want “myname764″ either.
How this can be different to about page in a blog ,I realy curious to knwo how this profile helps a blogger
I don’t think anything has ever been not Google’s area. But, wow. I’m interested to see Google and Gmail push Facebook “Connect” farther faster.
I wonder why so many people don’t want to sign up when they have such a charming default photo.
http://www.goog...GoogleyEyes.png
At any rate, it can’t be any worse than Orkut or MySpace.
The fact that Google defaults us to our gmail username instead of allowing us to choose a profile name is a big time fail for me. I’ll stick with Twitter, Friendfeed and my own blog for an ID thank you very much.
Got the news from @labnol sometime back!
Why would I want to have my gmail user name posted publicly with my name?
http://www.goog...e.com/../myname
If this profile page shows my real name then it becomes an easy way to discover the email address of any gmail user just by searching for his/her name and converting it into an email address.
myname@gmail.com
That’s a good point Adam. I was thinking about mentioning that. I’m sure a lot of people would prefer that everyone doesn’t know their personal Gmail email address by way of this.
That’s why it’s opt-in to use this feature. Users never read, but they tell you right in the text above the input box that enables this feature that “this will make your Google email address publicly discoverable”:
http://www.flic...joe/3441914175/
I have no doubt that Google folks went back and forth on this and then decided that it was worth it to give folks a more convenient handle — especially to cut off Yahoo and Facebook at the pass.
Sure Chris, opt-in is obviously the right (and really only) call with something like this, but it’d be nice of Google to give you the option of a clean URL other than your gmail name.
Profiles are dead. Long live news feeds. No one goes to profiles anymore.
Strange, I read all my new feeds through profiles now, twitter/friendfeed etc.
That’s weird
this is probably a step towards a .google top level domain. I saw some days ago a dotfacebook video at http://www.yout...h?v=IAngcw5nOI8
Google should integrate Google profile with iGoogle. iGoogle should become the “cohesive place to tie everything together.”
‘Google profile’ should be display in the igoogle page in the form of a tab next to a tab for ‘friend updates’.
ps. Didn’t Google have to fix the way it display URLs created through Google Pages, because they revealed people’s email address? It all resulted in spamming. So why are they making the same mistake again?
I do recall them fixing those URLs as well Alberty, interesting…
Sort of agree with iGoogle as well, though mine is starting to look like a bad MySpace page already…
Minor oversight MG, but your Google profile still says that you work at VentureBeat.
One of the benefits I could imagine of having a Google profile (in addition to all the other profiles I now maintain) is that it would surface high up in a Google search. But it doesn’t seem to do so.
And given how it makes my email vulnerable, I think I’ll be deleting my Google profile now. (I hope I can!)
Nice catch
Just checked back after I made a profile and it’s now possible to hide your real name to the public. Which also will hide your profile from a search at google… I’m not fully satisfied but at least my real name is hidden if I want to. Now I just want to pick a profile name and make my profile searchable!
well its not google area, but good luck. some of the things mentioned here are new to me. i was searching for property to let in central london for quite some time and i accidentally found this amazing website no agents 24 with loads and loads of information about tips for tenants, tips for moving, hips. I really like my new house. i went out for some fresh air today early morning, although i am generally not the morning person type but i have to admit i really enjoyed it.
This way Google is able to index “names” so they get all the traffic soon if somebody searches for a “name”. They even submit Sitemaps for the profiles (that’s SERVICE at its best).
http://www.gsta...les-sitemap.xml
As of today there are 1,74 million public Google profiles.
This kinda sorta seems to work – so long as you’re not trying to take a profile name of an existing Google account (even if they have no custom profile name).
I have a large number that I’ve tried – all of which come back as unavailable.
So far as I can see – if there’s an existing Google Account with that name then it is being reserved. If I try to do a search for any of the unavailable ones they all come back to 404 land.
I don’t know – this seems like another lame duck by Google. Who cares when there’s Facebook? Sorry Google, late to the party again.
Still would have preferred having the option to select an alternative vanity name although not the end of the world. Thanks for the information MG
Google profile is one way to optimize information. We would be eager to keep our profiles up to date and this will ensure all information related to us are in order and up to date.
Brilliant way to arrange world’s information by users themselves!!
I build a simple vanity URL app for facebook. Better than nothing?
http://apps.fac...ok.com/userpage
I think Google is trying to be your personal storefront. I wrote about that here, http://digg.com/u118gZ
Google Profile is a waste of space. Very ordinary. Did they get the work experience kid to come up with that? Don’t see the point of that when there are so many better options including Facebook, LinkedIn, your own blog (whether WordPress, Blogger, iWeb, etc.) Initially the Google design approach (i.e. ultra uncluttered) was novel. Now it’s just dull. Having said that, their search and Gmail are clearly the best in class. They should steer clear of mediocre half-baked efforts like Google Profile. They need to accept that some boats have left the shore, and they are not on all of them.
It will be very interesting to see where Google take this next. There are some power connotations for expanding the richness of their advertising data with Profiles. You are after all, doing the donkey work for Google and building a big picture of your interests, experience and information on your friends – data they can use to provide you with targeted advertising.
Another possibility is to build a giant GoogleJobs using the Profiles as a starting point of collecting your CV / Resume. You’ll have already included a link to your LinkedIn account so they will have a good idea of your job history.
Read more about this theory on my digital marketing blog – http://www.itsd...-in-job-market/
Join here and get desired Vanity URL then post the Vanity Url in the group.
http://www.face...gid=96553530387