I finished my Age of Conversation article. It’s titled “The Creative Multiplier,” and is about how new media can change creatives’ perspective on creativity and influence.

And yes, somewhere along the way the advertising industry totally nouned the word “creative.”

In order to get my mind right and have some conversation on the topic, I asked several good friends the following question:

New media has democratized large-scale expression. Because there is now access to tools (like iMovie, GarageBand, digital cameras) and distribution (creating a podcast is free, blogging, youtube, etc), more people can be “writers,” “designers,” “film producers” than ever before.

How do you think this affects creativity, in practice and in perception – both as a job and as a lifestyle and a hobby?

The responses varied a good bit, but were all insightful. Here are some favorites:

Doug Williams from Trabian -

It’s smashed distribution channels and smashed production barriers. So, it’s created kind of an anarchy of creativity. It’s good in the sense that creative people can have their voices heard on the exact same platform successful creatives can have their voices heard.

For some it’s good, for some, they’re just rehashing fart jokes.

The downside is that those barriers held within them revenue streams and profits that allowed companies to assume the risk in developing truly talented individuals.

It also helped filter out the good from the bad – of course, some really good things got filtered out…and the “mainstreaming” of creativity was a downfall to that system. So…in a sense, it’s empowered creatives.

However, it’s removed a fundamental distribution channel designed (although it can be debated how effectively it worked) to reward creative people, put them in front of thousands of people, and to invest in them.

Ches Campbell from SWA Group -

I think the more access we have, the more creativity can take place. Without the tools to do things, we can’t create……the best example for me would be digital cameras and photoshop. I can do all the photo imaging I want on my own in my house, or at a coffee shop or anywhere without having to own a bunch of equipment or going to a studio somewhere. Same with other forms of digital media.

It inspires me to actually go for it and do somethign instead thinking “I should do this,” because I actually have the means to do things

Charlie Trotter from Trabian:

One interesting side-effect I’ve experienced lately is how that affects people who make their living being creative. I can jump on Vimeo or Flickr or LOLZIES! and post my latest fit of creativity to rave reviews. They are pieces I feel good about, am proud of, etc.

When people do those kinds of things for fun, I think we get some really interesting, organic pieces of creative work. But when I try to bring that energy into my professional work, it’s more challenging because now I’m trying to please several different people with several different subjective views.

I wonder how this generation will react to professional pursuits having grown up with the creative enabling social media offers, because many of them will have spent so much time creatively only answering to themselves.

Brad Garland from The Garland Group -

From a business perspective, it allows the small businesses of the world (AKA the mom and pop’s) to compete on a level playing field with any other company, no matter the marketing budget. SmBs have the ability to promote themselves and share and connect with other that they once couldn’t afford before.

For example, our company is essentially created a television station for viewers of the financial services world. Yes, it wouldn’t show up on the top 1000 channels on your cable box but we are able to connect, network, and share with those that are interested in that field. We’ve had over 22K views of our content over the last 3 months and because of that content, it has turned into magazine articles, speaking engagements, consultant jobs, and connecting with people that we would not had the opportunity before.

Cheryl Doerksen from Currency Marketing -

Well on one hand I think that it definitely serves to encourage and stimulate creativity. With such easy access and easy to use tools, people are able to work on their own little projects without feeling the often creativity-constraining pressure of the cost factor. On the other hand one could argue that it begins to dilute creativity because people start to put everything up as ‘creations’ that may or may not have originally been dubbed as something born out of creativity as much as boredom.

As a job I think that more and more people are (or should be) being encouraged to exercise their creativity and access to these things enables that movement and increasing prioritization of the importance of expressing and fostering creativity.

Chad Gowan from All Speeds -

I think it opens up a lot of doors to dabble, maybe effects ones focus on what they really excel in. But another perspective could be that it doesn’t limit people from finding that one niche or the creative outlet that makes them all fuzzy inside.

Daniel Miller from The Leet World -

It sets the talented people apart, content is king. If your content is good, the theory is that it should rise to the top. Thats not always the case (unfortunately), thats what the internet brings to the table.

The flip side to the coin is while making content is cheap, and its a great creative outlet, its hard to get noticed by someone who wants to pay you for your intellectual property. Its like finding a needle in a haystack the size of the Pacific Ocean. And i think alot of people want to say that creating something is a reward in itself.

When you have to work a day job for 9 hours a day, then go home and do a hobby for free it starts to wear on you. It’s a double edged sword.
/end rant

Carter Martin from CM Design -

• Competition is now in theory infinite
• There’s no excuse not to try
• The cream continues to rise to the top, no one is ignorant / ambitious enough to keep cracking away at creative things unless there is some form of audience or they’re making a living off of it.
• Most creativity is spawned from within, but its continuation is for the most part based on the positive or negative reaction of others. Any reaction is reason to continue, but silence kills the spirit.

Thanks to everyone I talked to for your perspectives. I feel lucky and thankful to have smart friends.

Care to weigh in?

Over the past couple of days, both MySpace and Facebook have launched individual answers to the issue of data portability - the idea that your data from any given online service (from your profiles to your online photos to your Gmail acount) belongs to you and not the service.

On Thursday, MySpace (the shadier of the two) launched the MySpace Data Availability project. The New York Times breaks it down like this:

The new MySpace Data Availability project is its first in a series of initiatives by the company to support data portability, allowing users to take the content they create in one network and easily add it to other sites, MySpace said. Until now, social networking sites like MySpace have favored the “walled garden” approach, where they essentially lock their users into their own site.

MySpace said that it has signed agreements with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter to participate in the project. Over the next several weeks, MySpace users will be able to add their MySpace data to those sites with the click of a button, noted Chris DeWolfe, CEO and cofounder of MySpace.

Today, Facebook (the classier of the two) announced “Facebook Connect,” the next step in the Facebook Platform. Like MySpace’s project, Facebook Connect lets you take and use your Facebook info with you across the web. Their blog post from earlier today explains some specific features:

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring that users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

While your data is still essentially owned by the network, these steps to make it easier to distribute and use are significant. Even with all of the awesomeness that comes with Web 2.0, it’s still been a complete scatter-brained beatdown keeping up with each individual online service because they couldn’t interact with each other.

But now, it looks like social apps are ready to be social with each other. That’s very sweet of them.

Last week, social music network Last.fm said that since allowing free streaming of full-length tracks and albums through their site, just two months ago, they’ve seen a 119% increase music sales through Amazon.

Users can stream music and buy through Amazon in two ways:

1) Through their audio player (downloadable software):

2) Through their site:

Here’s a right-on-the-money reaction from ars technica:

If music sales as a result of streaming offerings show growth over a longer period of time (say, a year), then other services may also begin to push for full-track previews in hopes of increasing sales. Imagine if Amazon MP3 or iTunes allowed full previews on their respective services before buying—digital music could take off even faster than it already has. It shows how the very ideas that the music industry resisted for years have the potential to pay off financially.

Chris Anderson is saying “told you so” right now.

Today my buddy Charlie Trotter told me a story about his experience after signing up for Utterz, a mobile-blogging tool:

I Uttered an Utterz about hoping it would work well with my blog and twitter. I just got an email from the community manager welcoming me and assuring me that it would integrate just fine. He actually listened to my audio thing because I didn’t title it.

He went on to say:

I love it so so much when a site rep contacts me specifically about something. The CEO of Media Temple left me a voice mail thanking me for sending Media Temple a nice email. Dalas Verdugo, Vimeo’s community manager is quickly available through IM and quickly solves my problems when they happen. Now this email from Utterz.

Having that personal connection, having someone take the time to make it when they own a site with so many users is a big deal to me. It makes me a zealot for them.

Boom. How do you turn consumers into zealots? Act like you’re a human and they’re a human and we’re all a bunch of humans.

One of the more frustrating things about social media services is how disjointed they are. You have to juggle different groups of friends, scattered bits of functionality, and scores of logins (although the login situation is improving) for each service. For example, half of my Twitter friends just jumped ship to another service. So what should I do? Sometimes it all makes me crazy.

So I was happy to read on TechCrunch about oneConnect, Yahoo’s new catch-all mobile tool for keeping up with your friends’ joneses across services:

OneConnect will pull together contacts from your mobile phone, Yahoo address book, and social networks, including:

Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Hi5, Last.fm, LinkedIn, Myspace, Twitter

You will be able to see whether your contacts are online, recent messages, status updates, uploaded photos, and other activity streams for each one. Of course, you will also be able to send them messages via e-mail, IM, and SMS.

From OpenID to Facebook’s Platform to OpenSocial, hopefully this is another slice of a larger trend toward making all this jazz much simpler.

Fast Company, a business magazine with a heavy lean towards design and innovation (and a personal favorite of mine), has relaunched their website as a social network. Edward Sussman, President of Mansueto Digital, says this about the new FastCompany.com:

Starting today, we become the first major media website to tackle the following problem: Can a business publication blend journalism and online community to create something better than either by itself?

We think so. If done right.

For a publication who’s brand is ideas, I love this. Users who join the network can blog and comment, “befriend” other users, post videos, or even suggest questions to Fast Company. In opting to play equal parts mouth and mouthpiece, the new site is a big, fat, fascinating conversation. I’m looking forward to seeing how the user-generated commentary is used in the the printed magazine.

Conversations in motion include:

• Can good design save a bad product?
• How Social is “Social” Media?
• What is the role of the individual in corporate social responsibility?

Join the conversation by creating a profile here. And if you want, add me as a friend.

Last year, marketing bloggers Drew McLellen and Gavin Heaton brought 100 marketing bloggers under one book called “The Age of Conversation.” They’re doing it again, and you can help. Today is the last day to sign up as an author of The Age of Conversation 2.0.

If you want to contribute or vote on the topic, click here and get in touch with Drew.

Now’s the specific call-out time. I’d love to see contributions from: Trey Reeme, William Azaroff, Shari Storm, Tim McAlpine, Terrell Meek, and Ron Shevlin.

Ron wrote in the first Age of Conversation, and just because I enjoyed it a lot, here’s a piece from his chapter, “Behavioral Conversations” - -

To succeed in the Age of Conversation, it’s not sufficient for marketers to engage customers in verbal conversations on social networking sites. Instead, they must develop a new marketing competency — a sense-and-respond competency — to sense consumer needs and intentions based on their behavior, and to respond with appropriate advice, guidance and offers. And in a broader sense, this capability is about understanding trends and directions about the customer community based on their collective actions and behaviors.

I’m excited to be contributing to the second book. You can order the first book here. All proceeds go to Variety – The Children’s Charity.

I wish I could go to this year’s FinovateStartup, but I’m too poor. Finovate and FinovateStartup are conferences put on by technology + finance guru Jim Bruene of Netbanker.

Startups demoing their products include: Andera, Boulevard R., Buxfer, Motley Fool CAPS, ClairMail, Credit Karma, First ROI, Jwaala, Lending Club, Mint, Prosper, SmartHippo, Unified Money, and the rockstars from Wesabe (see how big a fan I am of Wesabe here).

It’s a stockpile of some of the coolest things to happen to money since the invention of “buying stuff.”

Check out videos from last year’s Finovate here.

Update ( 2/2/08): Thanks to Jim Bruene’s good heart, it looks like I may be heading up there after all to cover the conference on Open Source CU. You rock, Jim.

The Valley PR Blog posted a list yesterday of good free reading on new marketing. Enjoy:

• The New Rules of Viral Marketing - David Meerman Scott (WebInk Now)
• PR for Startups - Brian Solis (PR 2.0)
• The Art & Science of Social Media and Community Relations - Brian Solis
• Money for Nothing (And Your Clicks for Free) - Seth Godin

(See the original post at the Valley PR Blog’s “4 Useful PR & Marketing eBooks”)