I have a growing suspicion that the very savvy Sheryl Sandberg and the exceedingly wise Mark Zuckerberg read my work. From the beginning of this site I have argued that the smartphone is a completely new and transformational shift in personal computing, not a supplement.

The smartphone is the computer. The mobile web is the web.

This portends many changes in how we connect, learn, work, play and empower. It also reveals that what worked, even what worked very well, may not work at all in this new world.

Google Adwords, for example.

As I've documented, long before the bloggers and pundits clued in, wtih such posts as:

• The biggest question facing Google and its future: are mobile ad revenues supplemental?
• How much value does Android contribute to Google ($GOOG)?
• Google to the left of me Facebook to the right here I am stuck with no money again
• How does Facebook make money on mobile?
• No Facebook Phone? Okay, Facebook, show me the money.
• Facebook's future is mobile? Does that mean it's a future with no money?

…and many more...

There is no guarantee that even the sainted search-advertising-content presentation-display advertising model that has made Google one of the richest, most profitable companies in the world can deliver equivalent revenues, even when we have 5 billion smartphone users rather than the paltry 1 billion PC users.

Just late last year, in "Is Android bad for Google?" I stated:

Are we at Peak Google?

Google has spent billions on Android. With their planned purchase of Motorola Mobility, I estimate the costs of Android to Google to be approaching $20 billion.

Where is the return?

While Android quickly became the most popular smartphone platform in the world, thanks to Google's commitment to using its monopoly search profits to buy market share, actual revenues have been minimal.

What if they *always* will be? 

More frightening, for Google and others, but no less unlikely: what if mobile advertising revenues are always minimal *and* are not merely incremental? That is, as hundreds of millions and soon billions of users have smartphones, which we take with us all the time, everywhere, it is reasonable to expect that the smartphone becomes the *primary* platform for advertising. Rather than search for (often static) information on our PCs, at our desks, we instead use our smartphones for real-time, location-aware information that we can take advantage of at that moment at the point of presence. 

In such a world, which I find to be an extremely likely scenario of our very near future, advertising quickly evaporates on the PC and is shifted to the smartphone. Which may mean: Google is screwed. At least, Google as it exists today.

All Google's actions with respect to Android, the mounting costs of Android, their depressing, duplicitous statements re "managed" traffic instead of net neutrality, and their perversion of terms like "open" and "standards" all make sense when you realize that Google views the smartphone as I do. That is, as the future of the web and (nearly) all our web-based activities.

Except, there is simply no guarantee that advertising revenues on the smartphone are incremental. I believe that within only a few short years, smartphone 'search' and advertising will *replace* the bulk of search and advertising generated from the PC.

In Q3 2011, Google's quarterly revenues were nearly $10 billion. When providing its revenue numbers, Google noted that, at that time, (officially sanctioned) Android was already at about 200 million activations and that *annual* "mobile" (not Android) revenues were nearing $2.5 billion.

Facebook, apparently, understands what Google may not. From their S1 filing (via Business Insider):

Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results.

Mobile use of Facebook is growing faster than stationary/desktop use. Facebook claims over 400 million active mobile users. These users are spread over multiple platforms, such as iOs and Android, that could -- theoretically -- block or limit Facebook.

Yet the company focuses not on that potentially limiting factor but on monetization of mobile:

Although the substantial majority of our mobile users also access and engage with Facebook on personal computers where we display advertising, our users could decide to increasingly access our products primarily through mobile devices.

We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven. Accordingly, if users continue to increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users, our revenue and financial results may be negatively affected.

Second to Google, and possibly second to no one, no company knows more about us than Facebook. And no service is more regularly used by more people around the world, across mobile platforms, than Facebook. 

Yet their ability to effectively monetize this information, in a manner that will earn them enough monies to justify their $100 billion valuation, or even a $50 billion valuation, is highly, and now formally, suspect. 

And, no, it is not because they are unable to build an ad platform just like Google's. Remember, Google isn't making money off mobile advertising either. 

The smartphone is not simply destroying old businesses and industries, it is destroying old business models. Google makes a fortune by having what is -- to date -- the world's most profitable business model. 

That is going away.

The entire *mobile advertising* industry is expected to generate about $2.5 billion in revenues this year. This is less than one quarter of Google's Q4 2011 revenues. 

This is not to suggest that the smartphone won't generate unimaginable sums of cash. Rather, despite the 1 billion and soon to be 5 billion smartphones in use -- these sums are likely to come from new sources and new economic models. Why do you think Google is spending tens of billions on Android, Google+, media subscriptions and other services, applications and platforms? 

Because they have no idea.

This is what makes the smartphone wars so fascinating -- and so deadly. This is also why I think Facebook has a legitimate shot of surpassing Google in both revenues and profits this decade. Not simply because lucrative PC-based/stationary web search is, I believe, not likely to survive this decade. Rather, it's that Facebook's "social platform" has, in my view, a greater potential to offer more valuable information, feedback and services than Google. Plus, unlike Google, Facebook is not wedded to a 20th century business model. 

Whereas nearly all Google's revenues (still) come from advertising, only 85% of Facebook's revenues do. Moreover, this percentage has been dropping each of the past 3 years. 

Additionally, even with Android and Gmail, Google Search and Google Maps and Google+ and GoogleOther, it's very possible, maybe likely, that more people will use Facebook more often than all Google properties combined and also be more *engaged* with Facebook. Already, the company has 845 "monthly active users" including 425 million mobile monthly active users. 

That is power, and power always generates wealth. Will it generate $100 billion of wealth we cannot say, not yet. 

Along with the filing, CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote:

By helping people form these connections, we hope to rewire the way people spread and consume information. We think the world’s information infrastructure should resemble the social graph — a network built from the bottom up or peer-to-peer, rather than the monolithic, top-down structure that has existed to date.

We also believe that giving people control over what they share is a fundamental principle of this rewiring. We have already helped more than 800 million people map out more than 100 billion connections so far, and our goal is to help this rewiring accelerate.

That, dear reader, represents a fundamental remaking not just of the web but of personal connectivity on a hyperglobal scale. Facebook is already well on its way to achieving -- and capitalizing -- on this vision. Yet to date, that capitalization has generated less than $4 billion in revenue. 

What this reveals, then, is that the killer business model of our new social, mobile, always-connected world has not yet been discovered. True, the odds are that the leaders in mobile, those companies with the most aggressive strategies, the most users, the most cash, the best talent, are likely to discover it first and possibly exclusively.

Google and Facebook are the leaders, possibly also Twitter. 

Still, their odds can't be considered great, nor even good. Think of all the portals and search engines that existed prior to Google stumbling upon Adwords, for example. Or how many mobile phones were in use and generating revenues for Nokia, Sony and others when Apple introduced the iPhone. 

Money -- big money -- from the mobile web remains an undiscovered country. Keep searching. 

It's Friday, Friday, gotta sell some books on Friday...

I remind you all: the only way for me to do this is if you donate and/or buy my novel. The links to donate or to buy my novel are there on the front page, to the right. 

The book is very affordable and sales keep this site alive.

Thank you.

I'm sure he's not but, hey, I'm fucking pissed cause he didn't give me any stock for spray painting his car, the bitch.

Anyway...

Yesterday, I semi-innocently required if Steve Jobs, he that is now dead but was always spiritual, created the touchscreen swipe UI, now resident on hundreds of millions of personal devices, explicitly to get us all to make the sign of the cross -- up down right left -- over and over and over.

A sort of new-Christian, possibly divine, mystical ritual. The final transformational shift; a path of escape from our daily, hectic, non-spiritual lives by a man keen on creating just such shifts and opening up just such paths.

Probably it's just nothing. A coincidence. 

But I don't want to think that. I want to think this 'sign of the iPhone' is one more globe-spanning hack that Jobs created and cleverly implanted deep in our subconsciousness.

Because, you know, that's how I like to think.

Reader Eugene (@eugenescherba), however, has decided to keep me up all night considering the Facebook logo:

It's an F, right?

Or is it? There's a near-infinite ways of making an F/f but this logo is less an F and more a...(wait for it) bent cross.

Does a bent cross mean anything?

Consider:

Please notice the Crucifix that Pope John Paul II is holding up to the people, at left. Study it closely, and you will realize that it is not a Traditional Crucifix, as we show below. Rather, this Crucifix is known as a "Bent Cross". But, what does that mean? For the answer to that question, let us turn to a Roman Catholic author, Piers Compton, writing in his book, "The Broken Cross: Hidden Hand In the Vatican", Channel Islands, Neville Spearman, 1981.

This Bent Crucifix is "... a sinister symbol, used by Satanists in the sixth century, that had been revived at the time of Vatican Two. This was a bent or broken cross, on which was displayed a repulsive and distorted figure of Christ, which the black magicians and sorcerers of the Middle Ages had made use of to represent the Biblical term 'Mark of the Beast'. Yet, not only Paul VI, but his successors, the two John-Pauls, carried that object and held it up to be revered by crowds, who had not the slightest idea that it stood for anti-Christ."

As you can see, the Crucifix which Pope John Paul II is holding up to adoring crowds is not the Traditional Crucifx, but is the Satanic Bent, or Broken, Cross! This Bent Crucifix was created by Satanists to depict Antichrist and his Mark of the Beast! Very soon, you will see the appearance of a global leader, calling himself The Christ, who will claim to be Jesus Christ returned, the Jewish Messiah, and the Avatar figure for which all the major religions are awaiting, all in one man. This will be Antichrist. Then, very quickly thereafter, a global religious leader will step forward to aid the Antichrist; this religious leader will possess the same miraculous power of Antichrist. At this moment, the prophecy of Revelation 13:11-14 will be fulfilled; this global religious leader will be the Biblical False Prophet.

The New World Order Plan calls for this global religious leader [False Prophet] to be the Roman Catholic Pope, whomever he is at the time; certainly, John Paul II's use of this Satanic Bent Cross is consistent with this part of the Plan.

The moral of the story is thus: sometimes, the Internet can be totally fucking awesome.

Yes, I realize that now I'm just picking on Google. This is less about them and more about you -- at least, those of you writing for BigBlog and others.

You continue to "create" and write and package and aggregate content based on Google rankings and Google Adwords.

You are FM radio in a Spotify world.

I was sent this article by a well-meaning sort likely trying to help me "improve" my blog. Honestly, it only upset me.

25 Reasons Why Google Hates Your Blog

1. You don’t know which keywords your readers are using

...

2. You don’t know how to find the right keywords

...

3. You don’t use your keywords frequently enough

4. You are trying to rank for too many keywords in every post

5. Your blog headlines don’t even mention your main keyword

6. You don’t bother putting descriptions on your images

7. You never link to your old blog posts

8. You never link to other bloggers

9. You don’t fill out your page title and description fields

10. You don’t make your URLs search engine friendly

...

25. You write about too many topics and Google is just plain confused

Keywords. Tags. Links...ranking>>audience>>advertising>>good.

Sad, really.

How quickly we seem to all gravitate toward the mean.

If this is true, engineers in the Valley are way underpaid. And all those old-timers should launch a batch of new lawsuits. Via Tom Foremski: 

This happens time and time again. Mark Zuckerberg has said it many times, Facebook acquires companies mostly for their talent. Google does it too, all the giants do. They buy the startups and close the business. 

Twitter recently bought Summify (a few weeks after it was featured in SVW) and closed it down. Apple bought LaLa and closed it down. There are hundreds of startups acquired every year and their services or products are closed down.

This might seem like an expensive way to recruit engineers but there are many benefits such as removing potential competitors, which helps maintain the status quo. The giant companies have a lot invested in the status quo because they collectively have the most to lose from its disruption. 

Plus, they have agreements not to poach staff from each other. So where else can go? Startups are by far the best hunting ground for new talent.

So, do we really have a startup boom? Or is it a masquerade, a proxy for a battle between the Internet giants for top quality engineers?

The entire post is worth the read.

Did Steve Jobs create up down right left touchscreen scrolling just to get the world to make the sign of the cross billions of times every day? Could he have know?

Was this a subconscious decision? Guided?

A complete, utter coincidence?

Try it. One finger, up, down, side to side. It even leaves a cross imprint on the glass.

Earlier today, I asked if the iPhone ASP (average sale price) is sustainable given how much more it is than the entire mobile industry and other smartphones. Even next highest, HTC, is nowhere near Apple.

Apple analyst, Turley Muller, offers his thoughts:

Apple's ASP in this calculation is somewhat overstated for comparison purposes. Apple's ASP is $300 higher than HTC, but it's actually less for specific device comparisons. 

Apple stopped breaking out the device ASP and reports iPhone accessories, services, and carrier payments lumped together in iPhone revenue. That probably adds $40 - $50 to ASP carrying huge margins. No other vendor offers higher memory models at higher price points.

Less than a handful of other smartphones cost more than $200 subsidized, and Apple has $300 & $400 options. But if we try to compare ASP's for similar devices, Apple's wholesale ASP is probably $200 more than similar handsets. Carriers absorb most of the price differential with higher iPhone subsidies, thus iPhone retail prices (with contract) are roughly inline for similar handsets. Some argue that carriers will stop paying such high subsidies relative to competing devices. Originally, it was impossible to sell data plans for devices other than iPhone. Web experience on RIM & MSFT was inexcusable. Hard to sell data when you can't even use it. iPhone propelled the average customer into a data user.

iPhone ARPU's were about double AT&T's average. Thus, it makes sense to shell out higher subsidies.Now that Android has copied iPhone experience, carriers can sell data plans with lower subsidies.

People now argue why should carriers pay more for iPhone is the revenue generated is the same. What they don't consider is the higher costs associated with non-iPhone devices. Apple handles advertising, distribution, tech support/warranty replacement

Plus, Apple is selling providers' service through its own retail stores & online, which generates some of the highest traffic. How much does it cost carriers to handle support for the dozen new Android devices that come out each week? For training/support ? Setting up display & promotional materials? Android version updates on numerous devices? Heavy discounting needed to clear inventory of couple month old Android devices? Other handset vendors, especially HTC & Samsung do nothing more than sell devices to the carriers. That is their customer.

Carriers take on the responsibility & risk of selling the devices. To the carriers, handsets are just a tool to sell you their service, hence the upfront subsidies. Apple changed the paradigm. Wireless service is just a tool for selling iPhones. People prefer to buy device and service plan at the same time & at one place. It's also imperative for receiving discounted hardware prices. Before the iPhone, nobody chose wireless service based on what phones were available. First, the offerings were nearly ubitiqous across all carriers, and second, no phone was that much better or captivating for the actual device to matter. Service quality/coverage & price were all that mattered. Carriers gained significant leverage over handset vendors because they were the gatekeeper to end users and had many vendors to choose from. To gain access to VZ & AT&T 100M subs, hardware vendors have only one option.

The iPhone demonstrated its powerful effect on carriers. Non-iPhone carriers saw many subs defect to AT&T for iPhone. AT&T sub additions increased and churn decreased.

The power of the iPhone to attract & retain customers is indisputable. AT&T gained a huge advantage being the exclusive iPhone provider. Other carriers witnessed the disadvantage placed on them. While iPhone provides less of an advantage to a specific carrier as more of its competitors offer it, the disadvantage of not having iPhone increases. Carriers have no choice but to carry it. If they don't agree to Apple's terms & pricing, then no iPhone. That means that carrier has nearly zero chance to attract the 30M+ current US iPhone users and millions more potential future iPhone users. In addition, customer defections will be higher.

What is likely for Windows Phone 8 ("Apollo"):

Windows Phone 8, codenamed Apollo, will be based on the Windows 8 kernel and not on Windows CE as are current versions. This will not impact app compatibility: Microsoft expects to have over 100,000 Windows Phone 7.5-compatible apps available by the time WP8 launches, and they will all work fine on this new OS.

Windows Phone 8, as its name suggests, will also be tied closely to the desktop version of Windows 8 in other ways. They'll be launched closely to each other, and will share integrated ecosystems, thanks to the shared underlying code, components, and user experiences. Windows Phone 8 is part of the "Windows Reimagined" campaign that Microsoft announced for Windows 8. This makes sense as they're companion products in every sense of the word.

Windows Phone 8 will offer far more hardware choices than are available today, which will come in more form factors and offer more (four) screen resolutions, according to Pocketnow.  

Key new features of Windows Phone 8 include:

Internet Explorer 10 Mobile. Windows Phone 8 will continue to used a highly tuned version of IE which utilizes the latest web technologies.

Companion experiences with Windows 8. Microsoft is offering a very similar user experience across phone (Windows Phone 8), PC (Windows 8), and TV (Xbox vNext). This includes the ability to sync content (photos, music, movies) between the three screens, phone management from PC or web, shared content between each device, and Xbox LIVE games, entertainment, and more.

Skype app. Still a separate but better app and not integrated into OS. Still optional.

NFC and Wallet. Windows Phone 8 will allow users to securely pay and share via NFC and manage an integrated Wallet experience.

Sounds pretty damn good, actually.

We'll see come some unknown time in the future.

NFC, Wallet, Skype integration, improved camera and improved synch with Xbox Live have the *potential* to be fierce competition. I know that Gruber has written often about the potential downsides of offering a UI-platform-experience that attempts to (fully) share itself across multiple computing devices and screens.

Maybe Microsoft will finally pull this off?

Wonder if "far more hardware choices" extends beyond form factors and instead includes devices from Samsung, say, and HTC and others? Will they offer their best on Windows Phone or continue to focus on Android?

All that notwithstanding, we'll have so many new Android devices, plus iPad 3 plus iPhone 5 long before Windows Phone 8, I'm guessing. Microsoft better get this right.