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G+ actively enforced this policy in a way that made people angry. When FB does similar things [1][2] people are similarly upset, but when they were going through early adoption they didn't force this.

[1] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/07/04/3676529/truth-be...

[2] https://www.facebook.com/chris.cox/posts/10101301777354543

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They did, however, seed the community of initial users with real names by literally cherrypicking individuals at colleges from face books. So Facebook was always a place where it felt like one should be using one's real name, not "+X+ babyjoe23 +X+"

Keep in mind, Google already had experience with two social networks they owned. The Real Names policy probably didn't fall from the sky as an idea without merit; they might have had reason to believe that without enforcing real-world names, the resulting social network wouldn't get Facebook traction.

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