No intro…no warmup, just 3 thoughts on Facebook:

1. Facebook has 900M users worldwide. If they made Facebook a $10.00 a year membership and all they got was 25% of those 900M to signup (I tend to think it would be more like 75%) they’d generate $2,250,000,000 in year 1. Still think Facebook is a stock not worth investing in?

2. Long term Facebook needs to figure out mobile. Hell, we all do. But, I want you think about something; much like Apple choosing to make the iPhone available on AT&T only…initially, what would happen if Facebook made their app available to only Verizon users? Or Droid users? Or made it free on Verizon and Droid, but $1.99 on iPhone and other carriers? Are users more loyal to Facebook, their phone operating system of mobile service provider? Don’t for a second think that this hasn’t been discussed. With mobile service providers getting rid of unlimited data plans, how big of a win would it be for Verizon to be the exclusive provider of the Facebook app…AND…data usage through that app wouldn’t count against your monthly data usage? Huge. Crazy big. That’s the power of Facebook; they are the only company right now that could pull something like that and force the cellular carriers to change their ways.

3. Lots of talk about Facebook creating a Facebook phone. I don’t think it’s crazy. One way to beat Apple’s walled garden is to build your own walled garden. Think about it for a second. Facebook has Instagram the #1 photo sharing platform. They recently launched their own photo taking/creating/sharing app as well. They have Facebook Messenger, which is a iMessage and BBM competitor. They have Facebook Pages as an app, now, to let you manage your business pages. They don’t need something like Google Contacts, gMail, or a Google Calendar because those are inherently built directly into the Facebook platform itself. Facebook even has an app store now! The only thing missing is a browser, although…many could argue that much like AOL in the early/mid 90s when people viewed the internet as AOL…that many people today see the internet as Facebook. Ok, you don’t like that argument? No problem, so Facebook could buy Firefox, Opera, Dolphin, Sky or any of the other browsers out there. Facebook has a lot of the dots on the board. If they chose to line them up, a Facebook phone wouldn’t be crazy…especially if you combine this idea with #2. Yes, imagine, Facebook building their phone, then pulling their apps and restricting access to Facebook from all other phones? Sounds very Apple to me…and I wouldn’t put it past them.

Some of these seem far out there. But, the reason they become something plausible is because Facebook is now a public company. They don’t answer to their community anymore. They don’t answer to their users. They answer to Wall Street. And when you answer to Wall Street you often do things to make your numbers beat estimates…even if it takes away from the DNA of who you are as a company. I always look at to the meteoric rise of Fallon when we/they were a private company and the subsequent rapid fall after they sold to Publicis and became public. When you answer the to the street instead of the users, things change….and when you don’t hit your quarterly numbers in successive quarters you do desperate things like charge for access and create your own walled garden.

In my all time favorite movie, Almost Famous, there’s a key scene where Russel and William are talking about “the buzz” that’s generated from music and why Russel is in love with “music.”  As he describes, as written by Cameron Crowe:

But… it’s not what you put in, is it?
It’s what you leave out.  Listen to… listen to Marvin Gaye…
A song like “What’s Going On.”  That single “woo” at the end of the second verse – you know that woo – that single “woo.”

That’s what you remember.  The silly things, the little things… there’s only one, and it makes the song.
It’s what you leave out.  That’s rock and roll.

Take a walk with me for just a second…isn’t that the same thing you could say about a great campaign? It’s not what you put in, it’s what you leave out. How many times have you seen a campaign so stuffed with touch-points, collateral, key benefits and reasons to believe that the message…the one element so critical to the campaign, gets lost. And why is that message so critical? Because, the message (and I don’t just mean the copy) is what creates the emotional connection. The message needs to be simple. It needs to be palatable. It needs to be focused.

This is the reason Apple’s ads connect so well with consumers.

Apple fan or not, there’s no denying the power of that ad. The new “add-on” these days is social media. The first thing everyone wants to do is plug-in or bolt-on social media to a campaign. And why not? It’s easy to do and “everyone” is doing it. It’s all the rage, as the kids say! But, before you start adding Facebook, twitter, youTube, Posterous and all the other options out there to your campaign, make sure it’s going to add to the campaign, not take away from it. Sometimes, you might just find, if you want to connect, if you want the buzz, you’re better off leaving it out.

Personally, if I were the other carriers, I’d band together, pool resources and money and then take on AT&T and the iPhone as a unified team.

The Blackberry is on a slow painful march toward irrelevancy.  I know, pundits often claim something is “dead” as a means to  generate exposure and attention.  But, really, the Blackberry is dying.  Apple put the first nail in the coffin when it launched the iPhone.  The iPhone is the lightening rod that ended the debate between feature phones and smart phones.  Nobody wants a feature phone anymore.

And why would they want a feature phone when there are so many amazing smartphone options to pick from?  If Apple was the first nail, the Blackberry Bold, Storm and every other Blackberry launched after the iPhone were several others.  None of them lived up the expectations people had for Blackberry as a company and more importantly they didn’t even remotely begin to deliver the experience expectations created by Apple.  As Apple and Google/Android innovated at breakneck speeds, the folks at RIM couldn’t keep up.  Apple and Google chipped away slowly at RIM’s market share.  They filled in the gaps that originally existed (eg enterprise email support) and now provide legitimate reasons to switch.  The numbers don’t lie.

So what was the smoking gun?  Simple, people wanted apps.  They wanted the web to look like the web.  They wanted their phones to do more than just offer email and text messaging. And let’s face it, that’s really all the Blackberry was great at doing.   OK, fine, it also did Blackberry Messenger (which is basically the same as texting).

As the competition evolved, Blackberry remained stagnant.  Even their new Blackberry Torch is underwhelming relative to the competition.  As companies like Apple and Samsung set off to do battle in the tablet arena, Blackberry decided to enter as well…albeit ill-equipped.

Part of the problem is the hardware.  But, the real issue for Blackberry is the software.  In short, their operating system is holding back their progression.  There’s a reason why the Blackberry App world has less than 4,000 apps, while the Android Market has over 25,000 and the Apple App Store has over 100,000.  That reason is quite simple; developing for the Blackberry operating system is challenging at best.  Add in the fact that developing for the Blackberry is also uninspiring and you have a real conundrum on your hands.

So here’s the deal; how can Blackberry remain relevant, interesting and a player?  It won’t be through hardware.  It won’t be through marketing.  It won’t be through corporate IT’s stranglehold on security or rather the perception of security. No, it will happen through humility.

Humility you ask?  Yes, humility.  If I were employed at RIM, I’d be pushing one radical idea: switch to Android.  Huh?  That’s right, stop developing a proprietary operating system that stunts innovation, fails to inspire and clearly demonstrates a lack of commitment to the end user.  Instead, spend time and effort innovating on top of the Android operating system.  Hardware manufacturers like Motorola, HTC and Samsung have done a great job leveraging Android to create truly differentiated products.  Samsung really seems to understand the concept the best.  They started with the Galaxy S line of phones and are now applying their secret sauce to the Android operating system to the Galaxy S tablet.  Smart.

On the other hand, we have RIM developing a Blackberry operating system driven tablet called the Playbook.  Per the folks at Engadget, The Playbook “will utilize an OS created by the recently acquired QNX (just as we’d heard previous to the announcement) called the BlackBerry Tablet OS which will offer full OpenGL and POSIX support alongside web standards such as HTML5 (which is all tied into RIM’s new WebWorks SDK).”  Ok, so, they are getting the message…sorta.  RIM is realizing that they can’t go at this alone…they need help.  But, real help, the kind of help that will sustain RIM in the future isn’t going to come from creating a competing operating system.  The Blackberry OS has taught us that.  No, real help will come from Google.

Simply put, the key to Blackberry’s survival is in embracing Google and the Android platform.  When you combine the insights from RIM, the equity it has with corporate IT and the innovation made available by Android, that’s when you get magic.  RIM, you can’t keep going at this alone.  It’s like bringing Vern Troy to a fight against Mike Tyson…you’re going to get knocked out.  Find some humility and take back your relevancy.