Three months after making a promise to their users, Google has remained true to their word: Google+ will now allow psuedonyms.
Earlier today, Bradley Horowitz, Google+ Vice President of Product Management, posted the announcement to his account, which said they’re finally going to listen to the users who want to use nicknames and pseudonyms:
Over the next week, we’ll be adding support for alternate names – be they nicknames, maiden names, or names in another script – alongside your common name. This name will show up on your Google+ profile and in the hovercards which appear over your name. In the next few weeks, we’ll be displaying it more broadly as part of your name in other areas of Google+ as well. So if you’re Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jane Doe (Smith), or Saurabh Sharma (सौरभ शर्मा), you can now communicate your identity the way you want to.
To add an alternate name, go to your Google+ profile, click Edit Profile, select your name and click on “More options.” (See attached photos)
Horowitz did remind Google+ users, however, that when you change your name in Google+, that change is going to appear throughout all of your Googleness.
Further in the post, Horowitz also announced an update to Google’s policies and processes “broaden support for established pseudonyms. If you get flagged and feel that it’s in error, you can now provide the Google+ people with information to help confirm your established identity.
He concluded by saying that the mission to improve Google+ will continue to rely on the feedback he and his team receive from users:
Today is a small step towards improving the ways in which you can communicate your identity on Google+. We will be listening to feedback from the community and will continue to refine all aspects of how we handle names and identity over the coming weeks, months and beyond.
So you heard him: this feature is live. Go get your Matrix second-name in effect on your Google+ account now.