Three years ago, an online conversation between Drew McLellan and Gavin Heaton resulted in a collaborative writing effort by more than 100 bloggers from nine countries, titled The Age of Conversation. Today, 171 writers (I’m one of them) are proudly announcing the release of The Age of Conversation 3 – It’s time to get busy.

Age of Conversation 3 embodies the dramatic shift from Social Media as a hypothesis to its current state as an integral marketing tactic and the trickling-down into boardrooms, enterprises and governments. The 10 sections of the book speak to the pervasiveness of social into our daily work and life: At the Coalface; Identities; Friends and Trusted Strangers; Conversational Branding; Measurement; Corporate Conversations (my chapter talks about this topic); In the Boardroom; Innovation and Execution; Influence; Getting to Work; and Pitching Social Media.

As always, all proceeds of the third edition will be donated to a charity. Which should make it even easier for you to consider the purchase as a Kindle e-Book, Hardcover or Paperback.

You can meet all 171 authors here. And consider following them on Twitter.

Congrats to everyone for their hard work. And a big THANK YOU! to Drew and Gavin.

Consumer Reports just released their State of the Net survey and it underscores the privacy hazards associated with Social Networking:

• 40% had posted their full birth date, exposing them to identity theft
• Around 25% of users are not aware of or choose not to use the privacy controls

Compare that to the increased chatter about Facebook’s eroding privacy policy, people deleting their Facebook account, trying to find alternatives. (Reading about Mark Zuckerberg’s pranks doesn’t help their case either.)

Facebook has slowly removed the protective walls that made all of us trust them in the first place. It’s not inherently negative that people share their lives in public. There are other sites out there that are much more revealing and by default share more with the public Web. Facebook comes across as evil because they started on the other side of the privacy spectrum, just to move users slowly to the other side where all their data becomes publicly accessible. Reminds me of the movie “The Hangover”: It starts out as a nice, communal event and ends up with tigers in your bathroom. Or a cyber-predator in your credit report.

Social Plugins and Instant Personalizer, two new features just introduced by Facebook, could provide a more personal web experience. But, in their typical, sneaky way, Facebook didn’t explain the implications, people don’t really understand how it works and the majority still don’t understand how to turn the features off. Facebook’s opt-out norm is the ultimate insult to their users and clearly communicates: We don’t care about you. We care about monetizing your data.

Nothing wrong with making money. But it’s in Facebook’s best interest to provide context to aid the user’s decision: Visually represent how many other users (or types of users) might be able to access your birth date or see your kid’s photos. Do you think anyone would post their full birth date if they knew 1,453,432 other users have access to that data? Educate everybody what these users can do with your information. Give people access to their own data and let them decide what they want to do with it. Offer me an insight into the magnitude of data I created in my account and that is being shared.

I’m very certain that Facebook will implement these changes at one point. But, given their track record, it will be too late. As of May 2010, Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla. Their selfish, self-absorbed thinking will put them on a diet very soon and shrink Facebook in size to fit into the doghouse of Social Networking. At least, they have good company with the likes of Friendster, MySpace, etc.

Quick: Think back.

What did you love doing when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old?

What I remember from that age that I loved reading, coming up with big ideas how to change the world (I created mars colonies, a world filled with flying cars and robots that would go to work for me. Darn!) and helping others to solve their problems. Giving my friends advice how to deal with their parents and get the most out of them. All of my friends from the distant past remember me as the guy who always shared ideas how to solve their problems. (And pretty adamant about implementing my ideas. The word “headstrong” comes to mind.

I asked that question because I just finished reading “The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film”. In Murch’s book he discusses how to choose the work that makes you happiest:

“As I’ve gone through life, I’ve found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old (…) At that age, you know enough of the world to have opinions about things, but you’re not old enough yet to be overly influenced by the crowd or by what other people are doing or what you think you ‘should’ be doing. (…) If what you do later on ties into that reservoir in some way, then you are nurturing some essential part of yourself. It’s certainly been true in my case. I’m doing now, at fifty-eight, almost exactly what most excited me when I was eleven.”

It took me more than 40 years to find a place that is a reflection of what I loved most when I was ten. Advertising, Marketing, Media – it came close. But now I feel at home. Excited like a 10-year old.

Take his advice to heart. It will change who you are.

We’re not consumers anymore. The majority of us are producing ideas, sharing photos, thoughts, comments. Because we have become producers, we have much more power than we ever had. The industrial-age power structure of companies(Coke) buying white spaces/time on properties of producers (Time Warner) is rapidly disintegrating and being replaced by a new economic ecosystem of collaboration and co-creation. The challenge for most companies: How do we value this new ecosystem appropriately?

It’s easy to put a price tag on a transaction – You make something of value, I buy it and give you something (most likely money) in return. That’s the idea behind exchanges and the industrial age. It’s measurable. It’s efficient. But, there’s something else taking place: The relationship economy, aka The Karma economy). If I help a friend finding a new job, I don’t expect anything in return. When I love my kid and try to create the best life possible, I don’t expect anything in return. When I smile at a stranger on the street, I don’t hope for an exchange of emotions. I just want to be generous for the sake of being generous.

At its core, the Web is generous.  That’s why it’s so disturbing (or better: infuriating) that a company like Facebook, relying on the generosity of its users, develops monetization solution based on exchanges. A relationship economy brand tries to get rich based on monetary exchanges: In exchange for the user data, produced through the generosity of its users, brands pay Facebook to target users with more relevant messages. A total disconnect if I’ve ever seen one.

All this talk about Facebook being the Internet is just silly and there are warning signs that Facebook might be facing a groundswell of deletions very soon. The Internet landscape is littered with ruins and pitiful remains of companies that believed to be the Internet and Facebook will suffer the same fate. As they should.

Given the generous nature of the Web, people were willing to share data points with the world and didn’t expect anything in return. Sure, a badge from Foursquare is nice. That only works as long as all stakeholders are generous and understand this as a relationship, not an exchange. Users are beginning to understand that most brands just use their data to deliver commercial messages and pay a lot of money to get access to that data. Leaving the user with a shiny badge on his iPhone and data mining companies with impressive balance sheets.

Some look at Congress to legislate behavioral targeting and ease privacy concerns. Others hope the industry will self-regulate itself. I wouldn’t bet a dime on these initiatives. But I bet the house on the creativity and originality of people engaging on the Web. Privacy was always about control: We don’t mind sharing our personal lives and thoughts, but we want to control how, where and with whom. A privacy failure is always a control failure.

So far, our privacy options are limited to the options platforms give us (and how easy they can be located). The exploitation of by corporations leveraging asymmetric power to relinquish control of our data will lead to the obvious question: How can I control my own data, monetize it myself? Why should companies control my relationship with them? Shouldn’t I control the relationship?

People want to share their data and information on their terms. Yes, we want to engage with brands and give away our data to create innovative things. On our terms. When I’m in the market for a car, I would love to hear from brands that can customize offers based on my preferences. And when I made the purchase, I don’t want to hear from the again. Until I’m in the market again. I don’t mind hearing from a local restaurant about their lunch specials between 11.30 and 12.30 when I showed intention that I’m ready to head out to lunch. But don’t bug me before/after or in case I packed leftovers from yesterday.

Project VRM (VRM = Vendor Relationship Management) is still in its early stages and we haven’t see any real-life implementations at scale of this thought model. But, that’s where the future lies: Let me control my relationship with brands. Develop meaningful control systems that are easy to use and give way to a new ecosystem of collaboration and co-creation. The future is about a personal datastore, an aggregation of all relationships with people, platforms and brands. Completely controlled by the individual. Limiting the noise emitted by irrelevant advertising, spam and other commercial messages. Shaping the information flow and stream to receive communications when we want it, about things we desire. Ultimately, leading to a restoration of balance in the relationship between people and brands.