The future of the internet can't be mobile because mobile users don't participate much.They will take the time to type out their own carefully planned 'off the cuff' tweet. They will even respond to someone else's tweet now and then. But mostly, the action on the internet involves typing and they can't do much of it because it is such a chore. They read emails, but barely write them.

It's really bad for Facebook because they are a user generated content business. The mobile user can make a little status update comment and post pictures from their phone, but the bread and butter of Facebook, the real draw, the real reason to use it WAS interaction and mobile is killing interaction. Consequently, Facebook is now mostly just an echo chamber. The desktop users and that rare, intrepid, super monkey thumbed mobile speed typist are 'doing all the work' while most of the mobile users just can't handle doing anything and so mostly just sit back and watch.

There will be lots of eyeballs on mobile devices, but that's not the same thing as mobile being 'the future.' And any breakthrough that helps make mobile more useable is probably going to make the desktop experience even more awesome.

Henry, Alex,Mobility is transforming society in ways that are nearly comparable to the PC revolution. Very true. But don't let the infatuation with your phones blind you to the incoming new wave of applications brought about by the old stodgy PC you don't look at anymore. The price of the computing cycle has fallen off another cliff and every time this happens a transformation wave ensues. Think of it like an earthquake and the resulting tsunami. The earthquakes are the hardware critical masses being reached, the tsunamis are the wave of software applications that hit society 2-3-4 years later. Bing/Google "C++ Amp". That's the enabler of the next wave. I should write an article for BI about this.

Tiny Keys,I would like to disagree with you. FB and tweet users are conected nowadays all the time, through their smartphones, not only at time they spend useing PCs. Updates and reactions are instantly beeped on their devices, so the interactive meassure grows by that. FB,Tweeter and Gmail is implemented into those devices and without some of them, you cannot even use all fratures,that they offer so they are forced to even create new accounts on social networks, they didn't have before. People are using Fb messages instead of sms, so definitly it won't lead into some recession of social networks.

Henry, interesting deck, but missing the one app that we all use and the one app that you check first each day: emailEmail is the number one app on mobile devices. Period. End of Story.

And email is the best way to market to people on smartphones, since no one uses the 'web' on a iPhone. And you can't reliably target cookie segments in the mobile environment today. This isn't cool to say, but mobile is driving huge email usage and email is still the only real unique identifier on the web. A great Pew Research report came out on this yesterday. http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/02/pew-research-center-tablet-ownership-report/

great data.datamapp.com

@tiny keys,I disagree. Mobile users participate significantly, statistically and anecdotally, and twitter and facebook are perfectly suited to mobile; even if they weren't, the rise of media-rich, non-text based communication is growing hand-in-hand with mobile. I am dismayed to hear your experience with social media has been poor, but I assure you that you are missing out on the best aspects of social networking, many of which are tied to mobile. As mobile grows, hopefully the network effect will help draw you in to a more robust group of connections, and you will be able to experience the new modes of interpersonal interaction thriving online.

Facebook is absolutely not an echo chamber, nor is twitter. I aggregate industry news curated by people and accounts I trust (@businessinsider), keep up on the day-to-day with good friends and organize events, and check out the occasional high priority updates from acquaintances. On my mobile device, I get substantive, entertaining, and new content posted by mobile users - and I do the same.

To your point about not being able to type: it is extremely easy to meaningfully participate from a phone. Most social network participation requires little typing because it is conversational - per online communication norms, longform writing is for blogs (post link on facebook, of course), and in-depth communication is for emails (or Google+ hangouts). Last year, Facebook posts with 80 characters or less had a 27% higher engagement rate than longer posts, http://ow.ly/egjuR. Alongside twitter's 140 character limit (ideally closer to 80 to facilitate retweets), the succinct nature of social media communication ensures there is little-to-no barrier imposed by mobile on participation.

Even long-form online interaction doesn't require a laptop: google's speech-to-text and Siri are both remarkably accurate, so bulk dictation with quick clean-up editing is convenient. Also, I consider myself an average mobile social media user and I type around 50 words per minute on my android phone without monkey fingers (though I have the monkey-fingered show off 80+ wpm on typing game apps).

Though you argue otherwise, mobile actually drives social participation and engagement. Mobile users, who are probably encountering more engaging experiences to relate than desktop users, are equipped with media capture devices, used not only to capture scenery, but used expressively, to convey a message in place of or alongside