Alex (Founder of hypetree) here – I haven’t written a blog post for seeds lately mostly because I’ve been spending time developing hypetree (big announcement on Oct. 1st!). But I wanted to chime in on something that just popped up on hypetree’s Google+ page. I opened up Google+ to let our circles know about Best of The Week V and was greeted with this beautifully designed account suspension notice:

You see, we’ve violated Google+’s Naming Policy that very clearly states, among other things, that “you cannot create a profile for a non-person entity such as a pet or business.” hypetree is in fact a pet or business, and therefore we can’t be on Google+ anymore.

Before we continue, I want to make it clear that I’m a big fan of Google. I was one of the first people to use Gmail. I use Google products every day. Android is awesome. Etc, etc.

So when Google+ came out, I was thrilled. Many of my friends and colleagues were (and still are) skeptical of its place in daily web life, but I defended it vigorously because it was new, the interface was cool, and the frontend design was utterly fantastic.

Google said that Google+ was “only for people” at that point, but after I read that Ford was doing a promotion for Google+, it seemed okay to make a profile for a little company like hypetree.

I’m not mad. We violated Google’s policy, and they took action. That’s fine. Honestly, I’m not even going to say that the naming policy is altogether a bad thing – Google wants to make a separate system for businesses, kind of like (read: exactly like) Facebook pages. But I want to point out a few things:

1) We invited over 700 people to Google+

At the beginning there was a lot of hype about Google+. It was new, and more importantly, hard to get in to. The invite system was purposefully unclear and the Google+ team did a great job at making the service seem exclusive. So, in the interest of spreading the love (and getting some people to add hypetree to a circle or whatever) we started giving out invites through our blog, as many blogs were doing at the time. We ended up giving out over 700, and god knows how many people those 700 invited. I’m not saying we did Google+ a favor, but we did our part to spread the word about this service. You’re welcome…?

2) Our account was suspended for being a pet or business, but Ford’s wasn’t.

This is the only thing that kind of makes this not okay. Okay, we violated the naming policy and now our account is suspended. Fine. But – shockingly – Ford’s Google+ profile is still up and running, actively +1′ing and posting to their thousands of circle members. See for yourself.

The message this sends is simple: Google+ does not accept businesses, unless you’re a big business like Ford. Unsurprising.

3) We had an active Google+ account with hundreds of people communicating with us.

Look at this:

It’s a sample of what our now-defunct Google+ profile used to look like. I think it speaks for itself. By the way, hypetree has vanished from anyone’s circle who had it, without warning.

 

So goodbye, Google+. We’re not holding a grudge, we look forward to joining your business-oriented profile system when it happens. Perhaps it’s ill-advised to punish those who are actively using your system – perhaps it’s even more ill-advised to punish only small businesses and not large ones. But hey, you’re smarter than we are, that’s why you’re Google. In the grand scheme of things, you probably haven’t lost a whole lot by kicking us out.

Now excuse me while I go post this to Facebook.