Via Matt Cutts I see that Google has released an option to post your videos to an “unlisted” URL:
Philipp notes (hat tip to Googlified) that you can upload unlisted videos to Google video now. The webmaster help page for the feature points out that it’s like an unlisted telephone number: the odds of someone guessing an unlisted url are miniscule, but you can send the video’s url to anyone you choose and they can access the video.
I like this addition very much (though I’m not a Google Video user). I’ve recently become quite interested in the Unlisted Web (or the Private Web, depending on how you see it) as I’ve found that I love to use the Web for a variety of purposes, but I don’t want everything public and indexed. The related topics of the Deep Web and the Dark Internet (as opposed to darnkets, Wikipedia does a good job of explaining the differences) are also ineresting. Vox is doing some interesting things in this area as I’m sure others are that I don’t know about.
The comparison I use is to a neighborhood. We all live in houses or apartments in different neighborhoods. Some aspects of our lives are open to everyone in our neighborhood. Our house color, street address, car, garbage, etc. And if we want to share things with our neighbors we can post a sign on our lawn or write a letter to the editor. But there’s a much larger and richer aspect of our lives that we keep inside our houses. Photos of family, music, books, art, hobbies, etc. Occasionally we’ll invite people over to share some aspects of these, but our homes aren’t open to everyone to take a stroll through. The clubs we form have very similar public/private splits. We exclude the public because we aren’t comfortable sharing a lot of our information with people who don’t understand its context. And it’s the context that provides meaning and connection.
We’re slowly moving in the direction of giving people the tools and services they need to collect and manage their digital information. What we need now is a tool that allows people to collect and manage their digital information and create the desired exclusivity around each bit.
And this isn’t a hosted service, it’s a desktop application. Privacy is coming back to the Web.