4chan founder Chris Poole will try to fix social at Google

I can't decide if this is a stroke of genius or one of the stupidest things Google has ever done.

Misleading headline aside, I doubt he will have much impact in terms of revamping Google's social platform. 4chan became a thing because of the community it attracted (and then evolved into), combined with the preservation of anonymity in a world becoming less anonymous. The site's success is not due to some crazy genius foresight, just a matter of supplying a need for an insanely niche community and then becoming a space for all sorts of inside jokes and (not so decent?) content to reside, again all catering to a niche community.

As much as I enjoyed lurking 4chan back in the day, it's very difficult for me to see most of its innovations or ideas actually transfer to the mainstream. Google may have been better off buying Digg and turning it into a more accessible version of Reddit, and even that's a terrible idea.

I dislike real name policies, but I do want to push to fix some of the problems with using real names. This includes moving the business world closer to Cluetrain for example.

I think techcrunch should be congratulated for not spelling it "4Chan" for once.

Vacuous e-celeb worship. All noise, no signal.

"Mediocre coder gets a job at Google." Big deal.