When Google rolled out Buzz in mid-February, people were angered by the type of privacy breaches which have plagued another social medium. The three main issues for Buzz were:

• auto generation of follower lists from individuals’ private email and chat behavior
• auto completion of some email addresses in a feature similar to Twitter’s @reply
• auto connection to Google Reader and Picasa Web Albums.

Google responded to privacy concerns within days. However, for some who had very real privacy concerns, this simply wasn’t good enough.

I use my private Gmail account to email my boyfriend and my mother.

There’s a BIG drop-off between them and my other “most frequent” contacts.

You know who my third most frequent contact is?

My abusive ex-husband.

Which is why it’s SO EXCITING, Google, that you AUTOMATICALLY allowed all my most frequent contacts access to my Reader, including all the comments I’ve made on Reader items, usually shared with my boyfriend, who I had NO REASON to hide my current location or workplace from, and never did.

There’s still a lot to learn about how we integrate privacy into new products, but we know the golden rule - personal information should never be published without personal consent.

We were so excited to watch our ‘link-ometer’ click over to 2 million that, with our noses pressed against our monitors, we took screen shots of the exact moment it happened.

What does it mean to have this many web pages mapped? You can now sort more of your search results by their relevance to your profile!

The number of links keeps doubling as we collectively visit an increasing variety of webpages. A half million links were mapped by April 2009, 1 million by June 2009, and now we’ve mapped 2 million!

Thank you for contributing to this grand experiment. As we create a virtual topography of the World Wide Web together, let us know if your profile has led you to web pages you wouldn’t have found otherwise or if anything isn’t working for you.

You can enrich your own experience by matching your DNA profile with people you know, or asking them to give feedback on your profile.

If you’ve logged in to Facebook since 9 December, you’ll have been introduced to the new Facebook privacy settings. As with Beacon, these new settings have outraged Facebook users and rights groups. Again, Facebook has relented, retracting the all (Google-wide) or nothing (not even your Facebook friends can see) visibility of friends lists.

The Facebook blog is a hotbed for complaints. As Peter ‘mos Undef’ Mann observed, since the new settings were rolled out, Facebook users have had to navigate six distinct versions of what aspects of our friends lists we can protect and how to set those restrictions.

Well Facebook, you fooled me once with Beacon, and now you’ve fooled me twice with your new privacy settings. Please don’t fool me again – make the profit you’re entitled to, just don’t invade my privacy or my friends’ privacy to do so.

From using the MyWebDNA extension, you know that you don’t have to sacrifice privacy for personalization. Unfortunately Facebook didn’t know this when they introduced Beacon.

Beacon, which shared sensitive data across users’ Facebook profiles, has been a disaster from the start, causing outrage over incidents like broadcasting the price paid for an engagement ring — before the ring had been presented. In response to the widespread backlash, (the “How dare you betray me?” response we’ve detailed in previous posts) Facebook has had to backpedal dramatically. First they switched from case-by-case opt-out to permanent opt-out, then to opt-in only, and finally they canceled the program altogether.

Facebook still doesn’t get it; they don’t have to invade your privacy to deliver ads which are meant for you. Until Facebook learns that they can give you what you want without tracking you, they are under-serving you.

The Web Genome Project is powered by VortexDNA data — which has applications beyond sorting web searches. VortexDNA data is what’s known as a ‘universal predictor’; just like credit scores are used to predict your ability to repay a loan, VortexDNA data can be used to predict a variety of events.

This ability has some pretty impressive applications for a range of fields. In online advertising it’s being used to serve up more relevant ads; in the insurance industry it’s being used to offer fairer premiums.

VortexDNA’s potential implications caught the attention of men’s magazine M2, which featured VortexDNA CEO Branton Kenton-Dau in their July issue. The two-page spread featured an in-depth interview — and a very styley photo of Branton with a Maserati! Click on the image below to view full-size.

To those of you who have been reading this blog for some time, thank you. For those of you who have just arrived, thank you. I’m delighted and honored that you choose to share some of your valuable time with me.

This post is to apprise you of some upcoming changes: basically, we’re moving house, and you don’t even have to carry any boxes. As of soon, the VortexDNA blog will change over to the Web Genome Project blog.

The Web Genome Project is a movement to create a virtual topography of the World Wide Web, and is driven by the VortexDNA algorithm. Because of the WGP’s online focus and commitment to our virtual community, it’s the natural new home for this blog.

Incidentally, the WGP is rather new. It hasn’t been promoted to the wider world yet, but your readership of this blog qualifies you as part of a ‘friendly’ audience. We’d love to hear your feedback on the WGP interface and your ideas for the future of the Project.

As far as the blog goes, you’ll be getting the same great content, or at least my best efforts at producing great content. You’ll still be getting my same opinionated rants and my same quirky opinions. I hope to have a few more contributors along the way as well; if you’re interested in being one of them, by all means let me know.

So the next time you come to this blog and it looks a bit different, don’t be alarmed. It’s just us. And if you’ve got any feedback or commentary about the Web Genome Project or our new direction, I’ll be delighted to hear from you as always.

Thanks for your time. Thanks for your readership. Thanks for your input. I’m looking forward to continuing our conversation.

All the best,

kaila [at] webgenomeproject [dot] org