One thing Twitter and a lot of other social sites have that Google+ lacks is a nice, short url to give to people. I can say:

“Nice to meet you, I’m at twitter.com/iamjason.”

And there I am. That’s a lot easier than saying:

“Why hello there, would you like to follow me at https://plus.google.com/u/0/101453275162405736930/posts?”

After the 6th digit or so people wander off. Just imagine trying to spell it out during a candlelit dinner on your first date with someone. Ruins the mood.

I could use a redirect service, like gplus.to, for a vanity url, but then they get to see who’s going to my profile and it’s sort of up to them if it keeps working.

So now I just tell everyone to go to jasonmorrison.net/+. It’s easy to set up, if you have your own domain. Here’s how to do it if your web server is running Apache, which is pretty common:

Step 1: FTP to your server, go to the root directory for your site, and open or create an .htaccess file.

Step 2: Put this in your .htaccess file:

Redirect permanent /+ https://plus.google.com/u/0/(your profile id)/posts

This will create a 301 (permanent) redirect to your profile, which also tells search engines that you mean business.

Step 3: Order a new box of business cards, with your spiffy new Google+ profile link.

Hope this helps!