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Does Facebook really have a future?

Would you invest in a fad? (Fox news POLL )

Facebook is priming the news cycle, setting Wall Street a-buzz with the news of its pending IPO. Stocks may have an initial value of $34/share. Investors are lining up for bidding war. Is Facebook a good investment? In the short term, probably. Further out? I'm not so sure.

Facebook, a come-out-of-nowhere success story, has relied on venture capital for years now. Venture investment is optimistic and holds to a longer view on returns. Once Facebook is fully public, it must submit to the quarterly earning cycle, reporting on to shareholders on short-term forecasts. 'Shareholder value' trumps 'vision.' Does Facebook, a broker of other people's information, have a future? Will they as profitable as they would like Wall Street to believe? Maybe not.

The tech world is less in love with Facebook than the mainstream press. Facebook came onstage five years ago when 'social' was the new thing.' Facebook's strategy orbits their original success, continually refining their social sharing model.

Facebook stopped innovating years ago.Worse for them, the company has failed to find any success in the mobile world. It faces a future of obsolescence and  the risk of a new entrant like Instagram. 'Mobile' worries Facebook.  Why? 'Mobile is a Web-less Internet paradigm. Mobile apps don't have Facebook 'Likes.' But 'Mobile' is going to be big, very big.

Marginal innovation. Faddish product. Troublesome reputation. Weak customer loyalty. Treating people like 'product.' Media hype. Does this sound like a good investment to you?

Interested in the Facebook phenom? There's the Facebook Project, a video channel of social media experts sharing their opinion. I also recommend reading last week's Forbes article 'Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years.' Good points, though I disagree about Google's prospects.

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A smartphone, a subway, a grocery list

Steven Johnson, author of my favorite book of the moment, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, holds that there are very few 'Eureka!' innovations. Instead, most innovations happen slowly over time. Social networks, open information are key. He also says invention happens atop existing platforms. Johnson claimed Youtube couldn't happen until WWW and digital media standards emerged. The WWW couldn't happen until HTML existed and so on. Innovation happens when observant, intuitive people dabble in many areas. The seize upon something that is suddenly obvious and assemble the parts.

Tesco is a shopping store that used innovation to assail a much larger competitor in the Korean groceries market. By paying attention to the lives of working Korean people and looking at the available technologies, Tesco assembled something amazing out of existing parts. Tesco quickly gained market share and admiration from its new customers. And, I think, they developed a new platform for future innovation.

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AT&T predicted "you will" (back in 1993)

Have you  ever...

• watched a movie you wanted to watch the minute you want to watch it?
• made a phone call on your wrist?
• put your heads together when you're not together?
• kept your eye on your home when you're not at home?
• faxed someone from the beach?
• browsed a book from a thousand miles away?
• crossed the country without stopping for directions?
• attended a meeting in your bare feet?

The above video is a compilation of the 'You Will' AT&T television commercials from 1993-4. I found several things remarkable about them. The most obvious is the way most of them came true, either as consumer products or things IT has delivered to the workplace. Also remarkable is how AT&T has remained in the middle of most of these solutions -- TODAY.

Setting an aspirational vision with yourself and your customers helps to make things happen.

But the most astonishing thing was that they are not remarkable in 2011; we take these for granted just 18 years later. We have them. That's astounding. We have grown accustomed to the Remarkable.

"Fax from the beach" makes us laugh; who faxes anymore? Phone booth? They're extinct.

When I was a boy in 1964, my father took me to the World's Fair in New York City. I remember riding a monorail in the world of tomorrow. The pavilion said by 1990 Americans would take hover cars to work. We all had personal robots. Food was instant and delicious. A Jetsons world with fins. Today we have sleek, computerized automobiles and smartphones. Sadly, technology failed us with the Prius and SlimFast.

And who remembers '2001, A Space Odyssey?' Released in 1968, the movie predicted moon colonies, suspended animation, intelligent computers and personal video communication by 2001. It's 2011 and we have Watson and Skype. We went to the Moon in 1968 but haven't set up home yet.

Let's predict what will be remarkably unremarkable in 2029:

• Holographic television.
• Snap-on body parts
• Robots. (Why not?)
• Personal luminescence
• Wireless appliances
• Machine control via mental command
• Actual smartness food
• Auto [hair,teeth,skin] regeneration

What am I missing? Unleash your futuristic self!