As of the beginning of February, the members of meineleute.de [“mypeople”] are no longer able to conceal their identity using nicknames, but are only able to use their real First and family names in this city-networking site.

This was reported by the site’s operators in a recent post in their blog. This new measure comes about as the direct result of numerous requests by its members, as well as market research and surveys, in which 52% of the people interviewed were in favor of the introduction of real names for this site.

Among a number of consequences, it is hoped to reduce the amount of spam and other nuisances. The user, according to the management, will hopefully thereby consider his/her comments before posting, knowing that their true identity is known. Through this new requirement, further advantages for the user are also gained—one can now search for old schoolmates, colleagues, friends or family members.

Questionable is, of course, whether people will actually USE their real names.  Any means of truely checking this is almost impossible. So, the honesty of the user is all one can hope for.

meineleute.de was launched at the end of August 2007 (see our report). The regional community is a part of the city portal meinestadt.de and both ventures are run by allesklar.com AG.