Non-rhetorical question: do you think people are specifically drawn to services that have "real names" policies?

I've seen a number of people who are leaving Google+ because of it, but no-one who's joining because of it -- but I'm aware that obviously my social circles skew in particular directions. If you've got examples of people who've been specifically attracted to Google+ by the "real names" policy, please link.

If it's a big draw for some people, I'd be interested to know why; the first reason to occur to me was that people feel that it makes them safer from abuse or harassment, but as denise points out, that's be a misconception.

Or there's the comfort factor of "it seems just like Facebook" which shandrew suggests above. But that's a weird self-reinforcing thing, which is parasitic on Facebook already existing and being the only potential pool from which to draw Google+ users.

Google+ has made a business decision to have a real names policy because it wants to be as big as Facebook, rather than as big as Dreamwidth.

I would point out that the difference in size between Facebook and Dreamwidth is rather more likely to be due to the fact that Facebook's a long-established empire whereas Dreamwidth's only existed for two years, among other reasons.

But I assume that's blatantly obvious and you're just ignoring it for the sake of the snark, right? *g*