This point (anti-point?) is often made, but I'm not sure it actually means anything. After all, you could have said the same about AOL at the time when the few forward thinking among us were saying "Hey, there's more to the internet than this walled-garden stuff."

On paper AOL looked great (at the time), but they'd made a grave conceptual error in their product design that eventually became apparent to all. Perhaps we're in the same early stage with regard to identity?

Yup. The thing is, people don't need to choose between real life identities and personas on the internet. Most people want both: they want to be in touch with their real life peer group and they want escapist personas that can be provocative, obtuse, interested in niche subjects or authoritative in a way that would only be undermined by their real life lack of credentials. And in different arenas, they can.

It's the former area that naturally tends towards large, unified networks worth billions though. Its understandable that Facebook prefers not to lose the factors that made it unique by permitting joke accounts and impostors and devils advocates and trolls, even if many people find them find entertaining. Not to mention all the other things that come with a truly liberal policy on identity (like hundreds of millions of autofriending spambots).

There's the rest of the Internet for that...

Google and Facebook didn't get it wrong, they just don't want pseudonyms or at least limit each person so they can conquer/monetize the identity space. Two examples, (1) online commerce trust Google and Facebook identities sufficiently to allow them to purchase, similarly some poll sites can trust those identities, i.e., a single person can't vote a X times but creating X fake identities.

In 2007 I was part of a committee looking at the OOXML proposal for ISO acceptance. I had to listen to Google and IBM release twisted media releases about what was going on. I learnt during those few months that those two companies are in everything for the money. After that process was finished I consider Google a blight on this planet that I'd like to see gone.

One point that stuck with me was talking about the trade effects on the pacific island nations. Nations without proper access to anything thanks to isolation. I remember listening to FOSS make the case the case that those islands should be using Linux and not windows.

I remember making the conjecture these people where basic users, without access to proper education, and needed a monolithic MS style set up to keep them afloat, also people often without internet access, or reliable power (or even drinking water ATM). The response back was a blunt "oh well bad luck for them, thats not our problem".

That was the first time I became aware FOSS being used as an economic weapon, and in such a way that could cause entire populations of people to suffer.

And why? it sure as hell wasn't about making the world a better place, they made that perfectly clear. No it was about making money for themselves by hurting other people.

I think moot's observation is less psychological and more sociological. If he's right, then Facebook and G+ are unsuited to their goal of becoming the hub for social interaction on the Internet, and they'll inevitably burn out when their networks become too large and dense for users to sustain a single identity.