Facebook, which has been very busy ferreting away to get a presence on all the big cellphone makers, is in talks with mobile handset giant Nokia about integrating the hot social-networking site on its phones.

Its deals like this–as well as building its popular Facebook app for smartphones like the BlackBerry from Research in Motion and the iPhone from Apple–that are spurring huge market share growth in the arena by Facebook.

And there are more deals to come, with cellphone makers like Palm and Motorola, as the smartphone market keeps heating up.

Too bad for fast-growing Facebook and others that there’s no money to be made yet.

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About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?

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While there are rumors that these wildly popular videos of a posse of cellphones popping popcorn by their rings or other unknown death rays are fixed, BoomTown actually does not care one iota, as the remote possibility that they are not is freaking me out.

Frankly, it would freak Orville Redenbacher out too.

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Here’s a terrific shot of AllThingsD.com’s Walt Mossberg with well-known Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi.
(Click on the image to make it larger.)

They’re onstage at an event called the Israel Business Conference, put on by an Israeli business publication called Globes.
Walt was interviewed by Vardi. At one point, he noted: “In 10 years, I believe that most [...]

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More from the cartoon dudette and dude–Nitrozac and Snaggy–over at Geek Culture’s Joy of Tech, whose work will be appearing more regularly on this site, since we all could use a good laugh.
So what does Google really want from its upcoming current bid for wireless spectrum? Oh, you have no idea the extent of their [...]

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What to think of the announcement yesterday that Verizon will open itself up to consumers who want to use non-Verizon-sold phones for their wireless service?
Was it a bold way to thwart new rivals, like Google and Apple, who are promising–but have yet to deliver–a world without the fascist rule of the “Soviet ministries,” as Walt [...]

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Of course they’re doing a phone.

So let’s just all agree to suspend the will-they-or-won’t-they speculation over the much rumored GPhone from Google.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kevin Delaney and Amol Sharma wrote a nice wrap-up yesterday of the plans by the search giant to create a mobile handset.
And why not, especially since a lot of [...]

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Eric Jackson, the effectively noisy shareholder advocate who prodded Terry Semel to leave Yahoo as CEO at its annual board meeting just days before he did, is now targeting Motorola and its CEO Ed Zander.
While Jackson runs a small operation, he uses his Web site, YouTube videos, posting to wikis and other online tools in [...]

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This article was first published in The Wall Street Journal on September 21, 1998. All rights reserved.
I snipped my copper umbilical cord one sunny weekday not long ago.
Canceling my land-line phone account, cutting off service to my home for good and rendering the telephones that had long sat on tables in every room as useless [...]

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