This past March, while much the interactive community was locked away in the Austin Convention Center for the SXSW Interactive Conference, thousands of people gathered on the banks of the Red River for some good old fashioned kite flying at the Austin Kite Festival. Beautiful to behold, it also underscored one of the key themes from this years’ conference – the evolving role of privacy online.

Like a profile page on a social network, each kite is a public manifestation of a real person. Kite-fliers (let’s called them users from here on) understand that they’re participating in a public interaction, but though they are waiving some privacy rights to do so, they aren’t implicitly agreeing to share more than what the situation explicitly demands. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher, spoke at length in her SXSW keynote address about the recent controversy surrounding Google Buzz and Facebook’s privacy policy changes. In Facebook’s case, they noted the rapid adoption of Twitter as a resource for real-time search, and realized their own users’ real-time posts could be the basis for a competitive product- if only they could convince their users to make those posts public. So they altered their privacy settings to require users to opt-OUT of making much of their personal information publicly available, instead of allowing them to opt-IN. While they argued that in fact they were protecting privacy by giving users more choice, you and I know that most people will ignore the fine print and click on past those terms and conditions, especially when all they want to do is get to Farmville.

And indeed, that’s exactly what happened- Ms. Boyd revealed that 65% of users ended up making their Facebook profiles publicly available. She spoke about the case of one young girl who was trying to escape an abusive relationship- when the Facebook privacy policy changed, she unwittingly unveiled identifying information that could’ve had dramatic real world consequences.

In short: it’s humbling to be reminded how far we have to go in truly putting our users at the center of our design process. Are we really trying to create value for them or are we just thinking about connecting the dots on a business model? In Facebook’s case, they were all to willing to cut corners on privacy to push forward on a compelling business idea. Our?relationships with our users is built on trust and we must continue to protect that trust both for the viability of our long-term business interests and the benefit of our customers.