Social technologies allow us to share our every move. New applications such as Blippy even allow us to share our credit card purchases. In order for these types of applications to achieve success they will have to appeal to mass adoption. Doing so requires overcoming the largest hurdle - privacy.

Privacy is essentially withholding actions or information to protect something or someone. Its argued that by making information public, we are actually contributing to the advancement of our society as a whole.

Google is proof that privacy is subjective. People share private information everyday on Google. If you are logged into Google, it associates the query you make, with you. If you aren’t signed in, Google recognizes the unique IP address of your computer. Google does “anonymize” your search queries but the wealth of information users provide makes it possible to “reverse” this anonymity.

Still, billions of quires have been made on Google. It comes down to trust. Google is well-known. “Everybody” uses Google. Users feel safe. Individuals view of privacy will continue to evolve, but in the meantime applications will have to determine how to win the trust of those that have yet to even use there product.

One of my favorite blogs, VentureBeat discusses two approaches to privacy. Here are related articles by Zemanta:

• Google Publishes 5 Privacy Principles (searchenginewatch.com)
• Microsoft Bing will flush your search data every 6 months (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

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