An interesting take on the scope of Facebook. It's users make it one of the largest 'groups' in the world. It will soon be one of the most valuable companies in the world. Yet it has achieved all this with very few employees.

Facebook has approximately one-tenth the employees of Google. Compare that with their valuation, which is more than half as large, and their monthly user base, which is also more than half as large. And Google, of course, only has one-fiftieth the employees of McDonald’s.

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.

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. 

The smartphone is the cigar!

You know what's cool?

Well, yes, a billion fucking dollars is pretty cool.

What else is cool, apparently, is women live tweeting and otherwise live updating childbirth:

A new survey of more than 1,000 pregnant women conducted by American Baby magazine [reveals that] fifty-one percent of respondents planned to record the birth -- as it takes place -- through social media, with 42% planning to post regular Facebook updates and 9% planning to tweet about the experience.

American Baby executive editor Laura Kalehoff points out that many of the women surveyed haven't known an adult life without social networking.

"The millennial mom went through college with Facebook," Kalehoff says. "They're accustomed to communicating that way, and it feels very natural to share your pregnancy and labor with everyone."

The women surveyed ranged in age from 18 to 49, with the majority being 18 to 29. (Forty percent were 18 to 24 and 25% were 25 to 29.)

A useful analysis of why Facebook's advertising platform can sometimes prove superior to Google's, and why Facebook will not kill Google but will limit Google's potential advertising revenues grab:

For while Google allows you to narrow down the geographic territory in which your ad will appear, Facebook allows you to pick the type of person who will see your ad. And that is why I think of Facebook as the Cable TV of the Internet.

But the magic of Facebook’s targeting doesn’t stop with countries or education.  If I wanted to, I could advertise to all 10,141,480 Facebook users with birthdays that happen in a week or less.

 Think about that.

 And if you really want your head to spin, think about this: according to a friend in retailing, the average Facebook woman updates her relationship status to “Engaged” within two hours of the guy actually proposing…so Facebook sells that relationship status information to retailers who have bridal registries.

 As my pal told me, “We’ve been looking for this for fifty years.”

Facebook is social. Google+ is business. Right now, that means far more money for Google. Say what you will about them, Google does not leave their monopoly profits to whither on the vine. They use them to crush upstarts, innovation and competitors. For the benefit of users.

It's just that, for Google+, the users are businesses and the new platform is for their beneift.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that despite all their examples, I'm not terribly interested in interacting -- on a social level -- with the various businesses I transact with. No matter how hipster cool and, you know, personal they tell me they are. And no matter how much they believe they have a mission "to inspire" when really their mission is to sell flour.

OMG! IPHONE 5 POST!

I know, I know. I deserve punishment. But it's not gratuitous. If you follow the "smartphone wars" you know that iPhone 4S has sold in the kajillions (yeah, it's a word) and that iPhone 4S users are sucking up all the available planetary mobile bandwidth and that iPhone users in general, and iPhone 4S users, in particular, unlike their Android counterparts, appear to be using their device for everything. It is never off, never put away.

Darrell Eterhington claims that the next iPhone, possibly the next (major) iOS release, will have Facebook baked in.

Apple has apparently re-introduced code references to Facebook integration to the most recent iOS 5.1 beta that were once present in pre-release software but later removed. It doesn’t mean we’ll necessarily see Apple include Facebook sign-in at the system level, as it’s done with Twitter, but it definitely makes it more likely than before.

Can you imagine how many updates, photos and videos, probably also game activity, will occur once iOS and Facebook work at the system level?

This actually worries me a bit.

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 platfrom 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 shfted 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 fom 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.

Which is awesome, really, except that...how long will "mobile" revenues remain merely incremental?

Let's do the math!

$10 billion in revenues a quarter, for a good quarter, works out to, for this example: $40 billion in annual revenues. Which is amazing, really. Although, no matter how well Google does, no matter how many companies, such as Zagat or Travelocity, say, that they buy up, to suck out more or all PC-based search revenues, the overall PC market is not growing. Similarly, what *new* PC-based services and applications have you used this year? In the past two years, say? 

On the PC, we have reached Peak Google, I suspect. 

Thus, despite all the Lady Gaga advertisements by Google to get us to spend more and more time on their PC-first properties, such as Google+ and Youtube, nearly all Google's revenues come from (PC) search, still, and these may be nearing maximization.  Which would be, then, about $40 billion or so in annual revenues.

Plus, of course, the *incremental* mobile revenues. And mobile, as we all know, is growing rapidly.

Again, however, I am not convinced that mobile revenues will remain incremental. As more of us adopt smartphones, as more of us use smartphones, as more and more uses and use cases develop for the smartphone, our time and attention on the PC, and the value of static, stationary PC-based search can be expected to decline. Significantly.

Mobile revenues will have to ultimately replace the lost PC revenues.

Can they?

Possibly, yes. After all, on our smartphones we may search and/or discover and/or be informed of some deal, some opportunity, some information that is far more relevant than anything the PC could ever provide. Real-time, location-aware, able to be utilized at that very moment. In theory, because of its potential to provide more relevant and timely results, mobile 'advertising' (which includes deals, click-to-calls, timely offers, location, ad-hoc groups etc.) could become more valuable than PC search/advertising ever was.

But that does not mean more money for Google. 

Google, for all its brainpower, for all its hard work, stumbled upon a business model predicated upon a billion PC users, that made it rich beyond imagination. But the PC is dying. There is simply no guarantee that mobile revenues, in all forms, will *ever equal* PC based revenues. 

Consider Twitter. It is a phenomenal success, with upwards of 100 million active users and possibly our best source for guaging real-time human interest in people, products, stories and events. Their revenues are a pittance.

What of Facebook? They have quickly become the most popular landing site on our PC, are rapidly approaching *1 billion* users, and is about the most popular 'app' on Android and iPhone and Windows Phone. Better, they are remaking how people (and brands and companies) connect with one another.

Facebook will likely not even generate $5 billion in total revenues for this year. 

Do you believe Google is so much more important to people than Facebook? $5 billion vs $40 billion more important? Is Google that much better managed? 

There is nothing that suggests Google can continue to generate tens of billions in revenue -- and shockingly high profit margins -- on the PC, forever. Likewise, there is also nothing, yet, that reveals itself as a *replacement* for these tens of billions dollars in revenues.

Gartner predicts that worldwide mobile advertising revenue will grow from $1.6 billion in 2010 to $20 billion in 2015. Less than half of what Google generates this year. And unlike with PC advertising, there is little to suggest, despite the market share of Android, that Google will effectively own mobile advertising as it has PC advertising.

Apple's iAd, for example, though poorly executed, will likely own a good slice of that revenue. Don't forget, currently, and despite Android's market share, the majority of Google mobile searches are generated by iPhone users. Moreover, Gartner's predicted number includes tablets. For now, tablets effectively means Apple's iPad.

Likewise, the world's most popular app, Facebook, is gearing up to roll out its own mobile advertising platfrom. Via Ad Age:

Facebook plans its first push into mobile advertising by the end of March, giving the company a fresh source of revenue ahead of a possible initial public offering, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

An idea being considered is putting Facebook's Sponsored Stories ads, which feature friends' interactions with brands, within the mobile News Feed, said the sources, who declined to be identified because the plans aren't public. The News Feed lets users view status updates, photos and other content.

Facebook, the world's most popular social-networking service, would be playing catch-up in mobile advertising to Google, Apple and Millennial Media Facebook's potential advantage is that by gathering so much information about a person's interests and associates, it can help advertisers target potential customers more directly than mobile web browsers or applications.

Facebook, which has more than 800 million users, is increasing its focus on mobile technology with the aim of taking advantage of the shift to smartphones and tablets. The company expects its next 1 billion users to come mainly from mobile devices rather than desktop computers. More than 350 million users already access Facebook through mobile devices, according to the site.

"More than 350 million" mobile users and currently effecitvely zero revenues. 

Show me the money!

Google is, in my view, very capable, very resourceful, is very wealthy and very well managed. They are also, in my view, doing an excellent job of funneling their monopoly PC search profits into other areas, either because these show revenue promise or Google wants to kill off the competition and maximize its PC-based revenues. Think of what they are doing to Yelp, hotel listsings and the like; how they are spending untold billions on Google+ to hamper the potential of Twitter and Facebook and they way they religiously copy iPhone in design and function.

No one can fault them for not trying.

That said, I contend that analysts are missing the big picture with respect to Google's future. The many threats against Google, from Apple to Zaarly, from Bing to Yelp, from Facebook, Twitter et al. These are, however, even, combined, *less a threat* than what I consider to be the inevitable: the end of the PC's relevance. 

We are at Peak Google.

Even as Google becomes embedded in more facets of our (digital) lives, and even as they put up more and more gateways between us and the bits we seek, the source of nearly all their wealth is becoming marginalized.