Google Profiles – a spammer’s dream?

Monday, April 20th, 2009

Amid all the rumours about Google buying Twitter, it appears the search giant has been quietly refining its own social-networking arsenal. The company’s “official” social network, Orkut, has been largely ignored to death. However, the company has another trick up its sleeve – Google Profiles.  

This is essentially a stripped-down Facebook-style profile page, which allows you to share photos (from Flickr or Picasa), videos (YouTube), web links (to your Facebook and Twitter profiles, for example) and the usual biographical gubbins. However, perhaps its most useful feature – which was only added last week – is the option to create vanity URLs. This means that, unlike Facebook, you can create a profile with a memorable web address, such as http://www.google.com/profiles/barrycollins.

(more…)