Over recent weeks i've been wrestling with my strong views on privacy vs openess. What's really giving me angst is the continuing trend towards software, hardware and services that want to join the dots over privacy.
I doubt the CEO of Company X is sitting in their cave waiting for my next posting to appear, reading it and drawing a conclusion on me as an individual.
It's far more automated, and my data is a commodity.
Many people seem comfortable opening their lives up on Facebook, or allowing tracking of everything they do. Most are not thinking of their privacy, but just taking the free services and using them without a second thought.
Can you think of any of the services i'll miss if I stop sharing, and, importantly, will I really miss it?
Ok, i'll end my rant and get back in my own cave.
Last week's WebmasterWorld Weekly is here.
Welcome to this week's WebmasterWorld Weekly Roundup.
Last week we heard that Google is testing a couple of new search features: For one, you may have noticed that the font of the URLs in search results is now noticeably bigger. Google is also testing a new "search within" feature which allows users to focus their search on results just from one site.
There is a report that Facebook is testing whether to allow users to click on a hashtag to pull up all posts about similar topics or events so it can quickly index conversations around trending topics and build those conversations up, giving users more reason to stay logged in and see more ads. Would the hashtags be helpful to users, or just helpful to Facebook?
This week there was a great thread where WebmasterWorld Members were discussing how best to optimize a MySQL database for WordPress.
Microsoft Advertising published a study: "Consumer Experience Is Everything." Microsoft's Natasha Hritzuk said, "In our new study, called Cross-Screen Engagement, we found that while the era of ?Content is King? isn?t over per se, there is a new ?Crown Prince? coming on the scene: consumer experience." What do you think of the study?
Are the giant arrows on AdSense ads creating bad clicks? Join our discussion on the topic.
A study of 42,201 ISPs indicated that about 50% of all junk mail, phishing attacks and other malicious messages came from just 20 networks. Read more about the survey, and let us know what you think in our thread.
Pinterest announced it's rolling out a new look, and said, "We added a few new things to the close-up view of pins to help you discover things you love that you might not have known about otherwise." 
We asked the question this week, is Facebook pushing developers into paying for participation. It's been suggested it is an attempt to stifle applications that compete with Facebook-owned services or part of an effort to get developers to pay for ads on Facebook. What do you think?
Can you think of any new ways of measuring SEO performance? Join our discussion on the topic.
Microsoft has said Windows 7 SP1 will start to roll out on Windows Update and Windows 7 RTM (with no service pack) will no longer be supported as of April 9th, 2013.
Last week we reported that Google Reader was closing down. This week, it seems that Google has resurrected the RSS handling extension for Chrome browser. 
Bing announced an interesting new tool: Site Move Tool. Bing said, "The new Site Move tool under the Diagnostics and Tools section in Bing Webmaster Tools can be used to tell Bing that you have moved and permanently redirected your site, or a section of your site, to a new location."
WebmasterWorld Members this week discussed the publisher's notification by Google that certain medical keywords, part of the human anatomy, are 'too sensitive' for Google's advertisers.
There was a report made this week over the Chameleon botnet, which is made up of 120,000 home PCs. Apparently, the botnet clicks on ads and is costing advertisers as much as $6m per month.
Bad merchants watch out: Google is out to get bad merchants, and it will soon launch an algorithm to demote merchants providing poor buyer experience.
WebmasterWorld Members this week are discussing their experiences after making the switch to responsive design web sites.
Facebook is rolling out a new design. It said, "We heard from you that the current timeline layout is sometimes hard to read. Starting today, all posts are on the right side of your timeline, with photos, music and other recent activity on the left."
I read of a report that Yahoo is in talks over a share in the Dailymotion video site.
Look out Twitter clones: Twitter this week was awarded a patent on twitter: "Device independent message distribution platform." At the same time, the messenging service celebrated its seventh birthday. 
YouTube was on a talk-itself up mission when it announced it has 1 billion unique users each month.
Google was keen to tell us about Google Keep, a cloud-based note taking App. Find out more in our thread.
Following on from last week's announcement that Google Chrome's Sundar Pichai has taken over Android from Andy Rubin, this week, Eric Schmidt clarified that Chrome and Android will remain separate products.
Have you found some news that we haven't covered or discussed, drop me a message, or post it yourself and let me know.
Have a productive week!
Cheers
Neil
@engine
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